Space Oddity
by jinjyaa
Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind - an astronaut linked to Wolfram. Chap 9 - Conclusion.
1. Major Tom

**Kyou Kara Maou – Space Oddity**

Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind – an astronaut linked to Wolfram.

_Author's Notes: _

This is a sequel to Well of the Five Kings, wherein Earth was evacuated, and renegade nymphs (archangels) created a new moon – above _all_ the alternate worlds. My KKM future saga began with The Bedding of Wolfram and Epilogue. It veered off from the series just before the end of season 2, and ignores season 3. See author's profile homepage link for story summaries, illustrations, OC bios, the story list in order, etc.

I don't know how much of that is necessary to understand Space Oddity, though.

This chapter dedicated to methos21 – thanks for playing! Yeah, I know you wanted Disaster Up North finished first, but...

**Update, 2009-07-01:** _Oops – I hadn't written a summary yet for Well5Kings, had I... Now it's there. Sorry..._

**Update, 2009-07-08:** _Expanded physical descriptions of our Earthlings. (Thanks, DemiDaemon – good point!)_

Disclaimers: Kyou Kara Maou is not mine. Its original creator was Tomo Takabayashi, with character design by Temari Matsumoto. The anime was produced by Studio Deen.

The song _Space Oddity_ is by David Bowie, _Major Tom (Coming Home) _ by Peter Schilling. I like its recording by Shiny Toy Guns, on YouTube.

**Chapter 1 – Major Tom**

_Standing there alone  
the ship is waiting  
all systems are go  
are you sure?  
control is not convinced  
but the computer_

_has the evidence  
"no need to abort"  
the countdown starts_

_4 3 2 1_

_(from __**Major Tom**__**(Coming Home)**__)  
_

-oOo-

The first night, when Wolfram woke from the dreams drenched in sweat, he clutched Yuuri, and demanded sex to distract himself. Yuuri was concerned, but not unwilling to help.

The second night, Wolfram didn't wake. It wasn't that he tossed and turned more than usual. His quiet moaning and mumbling were far less athletic than his usual night-time gyrations. But any change from the normal routine disturbed Yuuri's sleep. Or at least, that's what he told himself, why he kept waking. Some of Wolfram's murmurs he could almost understand, but not quite. Surely that was what put Yuuri on edge. Well, that and the fact that Wolfram looked hag-ridden in the morning, when Yuuri managed to rouse him. His eyes sunk in dark circles. He dragged into his day too tired to show interest in anything.

That afternoon was when Garena began lurking about.

Yuuri and his Eleven Aristocrats still hadn't yet come to terms with Garena, their new so-called _'Prince of Darkness'._ They were unanimously insulted at the very _idea_ that the nymphs – _archangels – _felt themselves entitled to appoint a successor to Shinou. They dreamt up cutting retorts to rebuff his orders. But Garena didn't attempt to issue any orders. They assured each other that he'd receive only a cold shoulder in response to inquiries. But Garena rarely asked questions. And he didn't often _answer_ them. He just... appeared now and then, looking keenly interested. Yuuri found this unnerving as hell, especially because he looked even more like Wolfram than Shinou had. In an act of brave kingly leadership, Yuuri settled on calling the nymph/demon/whatever, '_Grandfather'._

"Hullo, _Grandfather,_" Yuuri greeted Garena, suddenly appeared in the back corner of his office, where Yuuri was meeting with his brother Shouri, father Shouma, Conrad, and Gwendal. "Is there something we can do for you?"

Garena shrugged. He perched on a short file cabinet, chin on fist. On Wolfram, Yuuri would have quite approved the James Dean style black leathers and tight jeans his grandfather had adopted as his _'Prince of Darkness'_ look. But on Garena it seemed ominous. No doubt that was his intent.

"Anything unusual happening?" Garena asked casually.

Yuuri, Conrad, Gwendal, and Shouma stonewalled him. _Oh, let's see. A month ago, twenty thousand refugees landed here from another world, and they're not really acclimating to life in a semi-medieval feudal kingdom. Nope, nothing much going on._

Shouri was clueless as usual. "Well, Wolfram looks like death warmed over." The other men shot him dagger looks.

Garena nodded thoughtfully. He gestured for them to carry on, _Don't mind me._

Gwendal growled, "Why are you _here,_ Garena?"

"The nymphs had a question."

They gazed at him expectantly. He gazed back.

Eventually Conrad posited, "But, you're not going to tell us the question."

Garena considered this. "Well, I might if you knew the answer. But you don't. And I'm still discovering the question." The men glanced at each other. "Wolfram suggested I be more forthcoming," Garena offered, by way of meta explanation. The men did not appear any happier. "Where is Wolfram?"

"Taking a nap. He's tired," Yuuri replied. He turned decisively to Shouri to resume their discussion on modern Earthling vocational options in Shin Makoku.

Garena vanished at some point. Others mentioned later that he'd turned up here and there about the place.

Wolfram slept through dinner. Upon consultation, Giesela found nothing wrong, and suggested they let him sleep. He did seem awfully tired.

-oOo-

_One of the great perks of being reinstated in the ESA,_ reflected Major Guy Tom, with the gallows humor he shared with fellow Brit survivors of the last few years of hell on Earth. _My own satellite phone. I can be placed on 'hold', just like Before._

Other nationalities had more elaborate phrases for it, BCC (Before Climate Change, which Guy deplored as inaccurate), AI (After Industrialization, though many quipped it meant After the Internet, given the withdrawal symptoms), Preco and Paco (for Pre and Post Apocalypse), etc. But it suited the British stiff-upper-lip to downplay the recent psychotic break in the orderly march of history, as simply _'Before'_ and _'After'._

Aged 37, Guy looked younger, for he was fully buffed, an athlete in constant training. Not bulky, his physique aspired to the ideal of Michelangelo's masterpiece _David._ Writ smaller than _David_, though, for he was only about 5'8", with light bones underlying the muscle. And his shining blond hair wasn't curly so much as cowlicky, kept short on the sides, but long enough for the cowlicks to dance into a criss-cross thatch on top. His classic build was well-displayed now, golden brown tan oiled by a sheen of sweat, adorned with RAF dog-tags and a high-tech platinum ID bracelet. It was too hot in their London flat to wear anything else over his old air force workout shorts.

Guy sat up abruptly as a click on the line preceded a Swiss voice. "Yes? You're sure? And you've found no one at all in Switzerland from DTI? No. Yes, thank you very much. You've been a great help." Guy clicked off and sat there, staring at the chunky phone in his hands.

"Unable to locate your _'demon'_ friends in Switzerland, either, Guy? Bad luck," commiserated his husband Rhys.

"Yes, rather," replied Guy. "I'm afraid that was my best hope. The chairman of DTI was a cousin of mine. But apparently their HQ was leveled in the first days, in those tornados on the continent. Surprised we didn't hear about it, after all that publicity about DTI biobuses, and the Chunnel incident."

"Clamped down on bad news for morale, then, didn't they," pointed out Rhys. "Pity about your cousin, though. Sorry, chap. Maybe in a year or so, you can get hold of someone intelligent in Japan." He didn't suggest the States. A year or so would be overly optimistic, for order to re-emerge in the States.

_They went to Switzerland, all the EU demon tribe. To be evacuated off-world to where we came from, Shouri said,_ thought Guy._ What a load of rubbish, I thought. Well, for their sakes, I hope it was true. If not, they were all killed in a tornado. Either way._

"How do you come by a Japanese cousin, anyway?" Rhys interrupted his brooding again. Guy Tom was blond with wide and vivid green eyes. Part German, Rhys could easily believe. But if Guy had even a drop of Asian blood, it was well hidden.

"Oh, well, you know us demons," Guy casually tossed off. It wasn't so much that Guy had confided in Rhys about being a _'demon'_, as that Rhys believed it a standing joke. "German grandfather, stationed in Tokyo before World War II, took a bride. Forced to leave her and the kids during the war. Signals got crossed, and they thought each other was dead. Didn't find out otherwise for years. By then they were both remarried with more kids. Shouri – the bloke in Switzerland – his Dad's my first cousin. Knew the Dad better than Shouri, really – Shibuya Shouma. International banker. Always dropped in when he passed through London, checked up on me, since my Mum died. Too kind, you know how the Japanese are. His wife Miko, too, a card every birthday. No telling where they were when it all came down. Tokyo, Basel. Hopefully not New York."

Guy interrupted his own musing, "Hang on, Rhys – why are you still here? Shouldn't you go hunker in a bunker by now?"

It was half past nine, long past time for his husband Rhys to have cycled off to work. Rhys was a physicist and modeller. Gone with all the other niceties of _Before_, were the days of telecommuting to the supercomputers on a home leased terabit line. These days, he had to visit the beast in person, in a hardened London bunker with fortified dedicated power plant. Cycling hurt – he'd lost a foot to gangrene in the bad first year _After_. But it was Rhys who insisted they live in London's gay Soho neighborhood. His famously out gay astronaut husband helped boost community spirit. Rhys was like that.

Rhys limped over and draped his arms around Guy's neck from behind. Four years his husband's senior, on the other side of 40, perhaps only Guy would find Rhys Thomas, PhD, beautiful anymore. His playful dark brown ringlets had turned mostly iron grey during the gangrene episode, and were cropped short now. His prominent, intent grey eyes had grown almost protuberant in his gaunt face. He'd always been lean, a rangy kind of fitness compared to Guy's ripped musculature. Now Rhys was downright bony. _Emaciated,_ Guy chose not to think.

"Well, I've taken a holiday, haven't I?" Rhys said. "Your last day of freedom before countdown quarantine –"

"It's hardly _quarantine_!" Guy laughed.

"I should hope not! But all that enforced _clean living."_ Rhys gave a melodramatic shudder. "Excessive _training,_ healthy _eating._ I wouldn't put it past them to say we can't have _sex_ anymore at D-day minus three –"

"Oh, let them try! They'd have a grand time inspecting compliance on that one, wouldn't they?"

Rhys made a playful grab at Guy's crotch, expertly intercepted to convert to a caress. "Oh, don't be so certain! They've tests for _everything_, you know! And you can be sure it's a homophobic old hag they'll find, to gleefully _insert_ something to check. Oh, yes! We'd best make sure it was worth it, then, shan't we. And tonight I've invited the boys round for a few pints at the local, sort of a bon voyage while you can still get stinking drunk and par-ty."

Guy leaned his head back to behold his husband's face, upside-down. "You're too good to me, Rhys."

"No, it's an investment. Can always get another husband, can't I. Space ships to study my darling Oddity, though – won't get another of those."

The mirth drained from Guy's dancing green eyes. "No," he agreed. Another space ship would be hard to come by, indeed. The infrastructure that built this one was gone. Another astronaut would take time as well. Guy had an understudy, in theory. In practice, if Guy couldn't go, most likely the mission would be scrubbed. His second really wasn't qualified yet. This was no glorified passenger astronaut job, where they sent up a school teacher on a publicity stunt. Guy was the real deal – test pilot, engineer, tech, and married to the principal investigator. He knew the scientific experimental rig as well as the spacecraft. He understood what little they knew about the sudden apparition of the new second purple moon, and all the anomalies, to a degree far beyond most non-physicists.

The moon that ushered in the end of civilization as they knew it, and changed the world forever. And killed off a third of mankind, so far as they could tell. Two billion people. Gone. All due to a space anomaly they didn't understand. Maybe. Probably. Though they didn't know how. _Yet._

Rhys' arms tightened uncomfortably around Guy's neck, giving the lie to his laughing words. "You'll have to come back to me. Promise, now. That data is irreplaceable, you know."

"It's alright, love," Guy whispered. "It's all good. I know the ground crew's not what it was. But they're solid. _I'm_ solid."

Rhys swallowed audibly. They'd watched them finish building this craft, underfed, no reliable power, fighting off the doomsday loons. "Dear God, Guy, if I've sent you to your death –"

Guy shook his head emphatically. "_You_ don't _send_ me anywhere, Rhys Thomas. I'm an astronaut. I _go._ Because it's important. Here, now, we're not going to neurose about this from now til liftoff –"

"Some respect for the King's English, please. _'To neurose'_ is not a verb."

"You knew what I meant. Tuesday at 8:00 pm, to end at 8:08 _sharp._ All the neurosing we can fit into eight minutes, an absolute orgy. We'll cry and wail, we'll tear our hair and rent our shirts, fall to our knees and pray. But only eight minutes. I won't have a second more. Understood?"

Rhys sniffed a little, but forced his anxious grip to relax into a playful hug. "Too right. Eight on Tuesday, I'll pencil you in. But _today._ You are going to break training with me, play _all_ day, eat everything in sight that you're not allowed to, have mad sex with me, get utterly sloshed tonight. Wet t-shirts at the pub –"

"Not wet t-shirts."

"_Absolutely_ wet t-shirts, and worse! But first, I need to start baking the chocolate cake."

"You're making it up. There's no chocolate left in Europe. We'd need another mortgage to buy sugar."

Rhys nibbled his ear, and whispered. "Just watch me. In the kitchen. Right now. _Chocolate cake."_

"I love you!"

"I thought you might."

-oOo-

"Rhys," Wolfram murmured in his sleep. "Love you. To the moon and back..."

They all heard him say it. Yuuri, Giesela, Conrad, Gwendal, Cecilie, Annissina, Greta – they all huddled around his bedside. Because Wolfram couldn't be roused the next morning, no matter what they tried. Of course, only two of them spoke English without translator-kun stuck in their ears.

"He's speaking in an English accent," Yuuri exclaimed. "Did he just say _'to the moon and back'_?"

-oOo-

_Ground Control to Major Tom  
Take your protein pills  
and put your helmet on_

_Ground Control to Major Tom  
Commencing countdown,  
engines on  
Check ignition  
and may God's love be with you_

_Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Liftoff_

_(from __**Space Oddity**__)_

-oOo-

_AN: So, think this story has promise? Please review! Reviews fuel further chapters (or another story...)_

_For those reading __Disaster Up North__, believe it or not, these stories are related..._


	2. Time

**Kyou Kara Maou – Space Oddity**

Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind – an astronaut linked to Wolfram.

_Author's Note: _Thanks to **ELENIOFME, Methos21, pandawolf, **and** DemiDaemon** for _reviewing!_ This chapter dedicated to DemiDaemon.

Made some updates to Chap 1 – more physical description of Guy Tom and Rhys Thomas (thanks for the suggestion, DemiDaemon!), and clarified a point re the common German grandfather to both Guy Thomas and Shibuya Shouma, Yuuri's father – he and the Japanese grandmother were misinformed that each other was dead after WWII, and remarried.

I finally got around to summarizing Well of the Five Kings, if anyone's interested in a recap.

Sorry for the long hiatus – I've been working on the Friedrich manga this summer. I draw slow...

**Chapter 2 – Time**

_watching in a trance_

_the crew is certain_

_nothing left to chance_

_all is working_

-oOo-

"_'To the moon and back'_," Conrad agreed, "I think that's what I heard." He thought he also heard Wolfram say, _'Rhys, I love you,'_ but elected not to repeat that part to Yuuri. "Where do you keep your...?"

Yuuri opened one of the lower drawers on the nightstand, and fished out two of Annissina's translator-kun devices. One for himself and one for Conrad. The only two people in the room who already understood English. Gwendal glowered at him behind his back and grabbed the last two devices in the drawer, using one himself and giving the other to the healer, Giesela. Greta ran off to fetch some more.

"No wet t-shirts," Wolfram mumbled.

Giesela – familiar with wet t-shirts from prowling Earth's nightclubs with her husband Murata – glowered at the sleeping Wolfram. "It's like his dreams are exhausting him. He sleeps but can't rest. It's a downward spiral. Hm. Perhaps I could drug him to the point where he can't dream anymore."

"Is that safe?" wondered Conrad. "When he's this exhausted?"

"_'He's tired'_, you said," complained Garena, as he walked into the room. He had Wolfram and Yuuri's adopted toddler Bertram in his arms – Garena's biological grandson, just like Wolfram. "Yuuri... this is what I meant when I asked, _'Is anything unusual happening?'_" Garena sat on the bed next to Wolfram. He casually held a hand above the sleeper's chest. Without further warning, he sent a sheet of green-orange flame blazing the length of Wolfram's body, causing the half-dozen onlookers to jump back a foot.

Bertram said, "Pwetty! Do 'gain, Ganpa!"

Garena smiled at him, but laid off the flames. "No. Drugging him isn't safe," he opined. "His head is very busy. So strange."

"Are you a trained healer, Garena?" challenged Giesela.

"Mostly self-taught," Garena allowed, "like my brother Friedrich. Some lessons from our father as children. I trained my son Manfred the same way, in the other well. My Manfred would have been a much better healer than yours, if he'd lived. It was hard for him here, learning from lesser healers."

This sufficiently blew Giesela's mind to shut her up. Friedrich was the greatest healer in Shin Makoku, with Wolfram's father Manfred a close second.

But Yuuri was still uncomfortable with Garena as Wolfram's healer. He suggested, "Perhaps you could ask Manfred to come, Grandfather? That would save time. If there is enough time." Wolfram was wearing himself out at an alarming rate.

"No, I don't think so," Garena said. "Manfred's in Donegal." That put him several days away.

Before Yuuri could suggest fetching a dragon to rush Manfred to his son's sickbed, Greta returned with more translator-kun devices. Politely, she offered them first to _'Grandfather'._ Garena and Bertram both took one. "Why these?" Garena asked.

"Wolfram spoke in an Earth language," Greta supplied.

Garena considered this, then his eyes flew wide. "Time!_"_ he exclaimed in realization. He offloaded Bertram to the bed, and disappeared.

"I'm not warming to that man," Conrad murmured.

But Wolfram took a long deep breath, and visibly relaxed on the bed. Giesela leapt to take his pulse. "His heart rate is slowing to normal," she reported. She tried to peel back an eyelid. She'd done this before, with no reaction from Wolfram. This time, he backhanded her off and rolled to face the center of the bed, munging his pillow under his ribcage.

"Need translator-kun," Wolfram muttered, annoyed, in his native Shin Makogo. His toddler Bertram happily complied, roughly jamming a device into his adored Chewy's ear, before anyone could stop him. Giesela tried to remove it, but an irritated Wolfram just flopped again. This time he landed, translator-kun ear down, on the other side of the bed, billowy pink nightgown rucked up around his waist, and bared legs curled over the munged pillow by Bertram. Fortunately he was wearing standard Mazoku black g-string. Which didn't hide much.

"He seems to be sleeping normally again," said Yuuri, with a crooked smile.

"Go 'way, 'm sleeping," Wolfram muzzily concurred.

-oOo-

It didn't take long for Garena to adjust the time inequality between Earth and Shin Makoku. For assorted reasons, Earth's clock usually ran slower. But lately, at the Earth Maou Shouri's request, Earth was running _much_ faster, to recover more quickly relative to Earth's demon tribe refugees. They hoped to spend as little time as possible as Yuuri's '_medieval' _ guests, before returning home to a modern Earth grown safe and stable again. In the subjective month since they evacuated to the well of the one king Yuuri, two and half _years_ had passed in the _'well forgotten of the angels'_ – Earth.

Setting time back to parity between worlds was simple enough, yes. Like his predecessor Shinou, Garena had the power to manipulate the veils separating the wells, and could warp from one reality to another.

But unlike Shinou, Garena hadn't enslaved his bosses to get them off his back. _Yet. _Though he was developing sympathy for Shinou's solution. Answering to the great nymphs – _archangels_ – as to _why_ he'd recalibrated the flow of time, was tedious. As his nymph-parent Tariel often remarked, _great nymphs are slow._ The term _'deliberate'_ couldn't begin to describe the glacial pace of their contemplation and discourse. The fact that Garena had acted as a way to _gain time_ to solve a problem the _great nymphs themselves_ had asked him to investigate, with _the fate of three worlds_ hanging in the balance, simply caused the great ones to ... _digress._

Eventually, Garena escaped, claiming he required sleep and then to get on with solving the _problem. _Good _bye._ He went home to bed in the well of the five kings. There he relieved his frustration by having wild sex with his lover King Wolfred, Shin-Wolfram's long-dead other-grandfather.

Wolfred knew better than to ask Garena how his day went. It was one of the things Garena loved about him.

-oOo-

The zip-squealing maelstrom of fastforward experience suddenly slowed to the point where Wolfram's conscious mind could process the impressions thrust upon it. The cessation of sensory overwhelm was an immense relief, at first. Wolfram relaxed into taking in what was happening to him, in this very strange dream.

Arm around Rhys, he laughed and shook his head, _No!,_ as beer was thrown on a boy's previously dry white t-shirt. The adolescent – extremely good looking, aware of it, and quite gay – grinned. He poured his own beer over his own head, jumped up and down, and hugged Guy. Then poured Wolfram's – no, Guy's – pitcher of beer over Guy's head and down his shirt. Since Guy-Wolfram was sitting, the beer flowed into his crotch as well. Guy closed his eyes and recoiled with a grimace, _feeling_ the lukewarm sticky lager drip from his ears and hair, down his neck. His nipples tensed as wet shirt plastered onto them. Beer quickly seeped through the zipper, and dripped beneath the waistband of his tight jeans. Wolfram lost track of himself as not-Guy in the immediacy of sensation.

Guy rose from his rickety chair with the vague intention of doing something with a napkin. The teenager stole the napkin from him and knelt before his crotch, theatrically protruding tongue. Rhys stumbled up and pushed the kid's head away, laughing, but then licked Guy's ear himself, catapulting Guy right back into _pure feel,_ with an erotic shiver that shot far beyond his ear_._

Guy gave up and dragged a protesting Rhys and the beer-dunking delinquent out to dance with him. Neither of them danced well, but no one else did, either. The ancient low-ceilinged, half-timbered pub was packed with drunken gay men, most in wet t-shirts, often atop wet tightie-whities. It was hot, and sticky, and the music throbbed - digitally mastered _Before _ music over a good sound system in the candlelight. Slightly drunk, Guy surrendered to the throb of the music's bass, the feel of his own rippling muscle and sinuous moves, and enjoyed the undulating bodies of others. Friends danced over and hugged him. And each time he hugged someone else, he turned to hug Rhys again.

It was good. It was a perfect _bon voyage_ party! His face ached from smiling and laughing so much.

His satellite phone buzzed his ass a couple times before he noticed. He yelled into it, _"Hold on, can't hear you, need to get outside!"_ He had to push and hug his way out of the pub, into the noisome dark street. His foot slipped on a rotten fish on the wet sidewalk. A light summer rain had passed, leaving the air hot and still and close, redolent of urine and sewage and the decayed garbage slime that coated the streets. Several burly men came out and ringed him, faces outward, on guard.

Guy finally answered his sat phone. "Sorry! Guy Tom here, yes?" Except Wolfram didn't understand what he himself was saying. Suddenly back in the world of the verbal, he dissociated back to not-Guy. _Need translator-kun!_ His awareness of Guy's world slipped as Giesela, then Bertram, disturbed him in Shin Makoku. But when he was back fully asleep, translator-kun in his ear, he could understand the words, including Guy's verbal understanding of them, and slid deeper than ever into _being_ Guy Tom.

"_Forward,_ you say? You meant _delayed,_ surely?" _No one pushes a launch date__** forward!**_

"Careful, Major! Yes, because of the threats, we've moved the launch date _forward._ Tell _no one_. That includes your husband."

"But - !"

"Guy, if this leaks, Rhys is the last person we can afford under suspicion. Don't put him in that position. Now, how are you set?"

"Um, you've caught me drunk at my going-away party, pre-training. Sir. Er –"

The voice snorted. "Well, sober up and live clean _fast._ Oh eight hundred." _Click._

_ Right..._ "Ta, mates! Back in!"

While he pushed his way back to Rhys – much impeded by well-wishers – the 21st century dance music died, to general groans. The _Before_ music always died. The barkeep had power to play it only one hour a night. For this special occasion, he'd stretched it to two hours, by shortchanging other nights. For now, a live paco band set up. Paco – for post-apocalyptic – was the non-electronic popular music these days.

Some might have expected the loss of technology to lead to a Woodstock style guitar-love-in revival. But Woodstock was a time of innocence and wide-eyed optimism. Even Guy found the songs from those halcyon days of the US space program infuriating. The only 60's song he could relate to anymore was Procol Harem's mournful _Whiter Shade of Pale : '...Her face at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale. She said there is no reason, and the truth is plain to see…' _These days, even the Gaia fanatics and eco-terrorists listened to paco.

"_Hell!"_ seven voices screamed, to no musical accompaniment. "_Fuck!"_ followed some unnerving number of seconds later. It was an art form, of sorts, to space the screams and silences to be jarring, with no rhythm or ability to predict when next they'd scream. But gradually the shrieks merged into lyrics, without melody, rage given voice. "_Rape your own sister first - !"_ The lack of amplifiers required audience participation in this genre. "_Rape! Rape! Rape!"___The audience danced in a sort of mosh pit pogo stick aesthetic.

Guy spotted Rhys in a back corner dedicated to darts and bowling cheeses. These toys, skillfully aimed at leisure a few minutes ago, now hurled as vicious projectiles with the music. Guy paused and watched a moment, as Rhys completed a furtive financial transaction, and popped some pills. _Again._

_ When I get back. I won't confront him about it before the mission. _This was a well-worn groove. Their lives had revolved entirely around this space launch and investigating the new moon, since soon after the moon appeared. Guy had no real plans for _after the mission_, not even this one of dealing with Rhys' illegal drugs. _'After the mission'_ was simply a mental filing bin for all that was extraneous to accomplishing the mission.

Guy reached his husband at last, and yelled into his ear, _"You know you're over the hill when popular song lyrics offend you."_

_"Hill? What hill? I don't remember any hill,"_ Rhys quipped in response. _"I think there's a certain mathematical purity to the bass line. Oh, alright. Let's go."_

Wolfram lost interest as they gathered some friends, said good-bye to others, and pushed their way out of the pub. He fell deeper into sleep for a time. His consciousness surfaced only briefly from time to time, to glimpse strange little vignettes. A lesbian biker gang surrounded them with torches. A city block roared in flames while a small crowd of onlookers cheered. Small fireworks in a dark alley. Guy waved a sparkler, tracing a brilliant infinity symbol around the two moons, white and purple, sailing full together at the crown of the midnight sky.

-oOo-

Guy was sound asleep, providing no distraction, when Garena roused Wolfram the next morning. Yuuri and the adults of his family, plus the rather lost healer Giesela, all ringed around his bed staring at Wolfram, as he crabbily opened one eye. "What the…" he grumbled.

"Wolframu!" Yuuri cried in relief, and clutched his lover's hand. He had to reach awkwardly around Garena, who didn't budge. Wolfram's answering growl relieved Yuuri's mind even more - his beloved was returning to normal! "How are you feeling?"

"Tired. Weirdest dreams."

Yuuri explained how long Wolfram had been asleep. Then Garena asked him to describe his dreams.

Wolfram didn't get very far on that before Shibuya Shouma erupted, "Did you say _Guy Tom?_" He wheeled on his hapless firstborn, Shouri, and accused, "My _cousin!_ The one you _left behind!_" Wolfram had never seen his affable father-in-law so angry before.

"Ah - I - he - didn't want to come, Otou-san," Yuuri's brother Shouri stammered.

"How could you, Shou-chan!" scolded Shouri's mother Miko. Wolfram's mother-in-law scolding was not unusual. Actually, the whole interchange had a re-run feel to it. This wasn't news to his in-laws. They just weren't done being angry about it.

" '_Guy Tom'_ is a demon?" Garena inquired. _Not that it should make much difference,_ he thought. There were twenty thousand demons in the evacuation of Earth. A few odds and ends left behind shouldn't matter to the moon risk the great ones had asked him to investigate. Though a close relative to the Maous was a bit worrisome.

"Yes –" Shouri allowed.

"– Bob's first choice successor as Maou," Shouma elaborated, scowling at Bob's second choice. "Then this world's _Shinou_ requested Shouri and Yuu-chan –"

"Guy wouldn't have _wanted_ to be Maou!" Shouri objected. "He's an _astronaut,_ Otou-san, not a businessman!"

"He was a _child_ at the time!" countered Shouma. A large child – Guy was ten years Shouri's senior. Or rather, twelve years Shouri's senior, now.

"What is an _'astronaut'_?" Garena inquired.

Wolfram explained, "He's about to fly to the moon. The new purple moon. To investigate."

That stopped the argument between Shouri and Shouma cold. They gazed at Wolfram in proud awe. Shouma hugged Miko close. "Our cousin. The first man to the new moon! What an historic spaceflight!"

Garena's face looked closer to horror. "That isn't possible," he whispered. "Is it?" The angels hadn't paid much attention to Earth - _the well forsaken by the angels - _ these past couple thousand years.

"In a few days," Wolfram confirmed.

Yuuri and Cheri looked at each other. Working with Aldrich and Shinou, they had created that moon, by pushing the enemy Soushu out of the three wells. Soushu hadn't gone quite far enough.

Garena spoke their thoughts. "That would be a really bad idea. For a Maou level demon to visit Soushu."

_Tariel, Quercus, _Garena called silently across the infinities._ I think I've found the problem._

-oOo-

_This is Ground Control to Major Tom  
You've really made the grade  
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear  
_

-oOo-

_AN: Please review? _


	3. Crazy

**Kyou Kara Maou – Space Oddity**

Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind – an astronaut linked to Wolfram.

_Author's Note: _This chapter dedicated to **JoanaW****, Methos21, **and** DemiDaemon** for _reviewing!_

Sorry for the long hiatus. But I felt like writing again. Sort of like I have writer's block on my life, and maybe flushing these stories out of my head might clear that. Help me keep going, by reviewing?

**Chapter 3 – Crazy**

"We've got to stop him," concluded Yuuri. "How?"

His father Shouma erupted in outrage, "_Stop_ him? Stop _my cousin Guy_ from making the greatest spaceflight in history? To the new purple moon? What do you mean,_ 'Stop him' ?_!"

"Why stop him, Yuuri?" Wolfram interjected, mostly to keep the peace and buy some thinking time. Images swam in his mind, of burly gay barmen and an entourage of _'dykes on bikes'_. _Guy's well guarded. Against _'doomsday loons' _ trying to interfere with his takeoff._ Wolfram had a vague queasy notion of what _takeoff_ meant, of the sort that presaged motion sickness.

Yuuri explained, "The purple moon was unreachable. It shut Soushu's annihilists away so they couldn't destroy our worlds. But we Maous locked them there. Another Maou could _unlock_ them, reopen their connection." Yuuri frowned. "But Guy isn't Maou of Earth. Shouri is."

"Shouri left," Garena theorized. "Bob stays behind, so Bob is Maou again. When Bob dies, Guy is Maou."

"Bob is dead?" whispered Shouma. Miko clutched his hand.

"The first day. Tornados," confirmed Tariel. The child-sized blond nymph, Garena's immortal mother, appeared next to him. Mournfully, he/she added, "I feel Maou die, and see."

Tariel had come close to _'falling'_ that day – becoming a demon, a fallen angel – in his rage against the angelic ban on _'interfering'._ To _allow_ the billions on Earth to die, on the grounds that the angels had forsaken Earth – this he could not bear. Especially a _Maou! _All but an angel himself! Tariel had opposed forsaking Earth in the first place. Which was probably why Soushu's supporters among the great nymphs, like Ponderosa, had left Tariel to dwindle and die by the One Law. Which ironically resulted in Tariel being the only nymph alive and free during the nymphs' accidental millenia-long captivity by Shinou.

With the greatest nymph Quercus restraining Tariel that day, as Bob and the billions died, Tariel had not fallen. But neither had he risen. Called a _'great nymph'_ or _'archangel' _in respect, Tariel still acted as a minor angel. On the mortal plane, he was a lesser wood nymph, spirit of the dogwood tree, an androgynous blond 10-year-old in a plain tan shift. Which wasn't a solution, as Quercus continued to point out.

"Tariel!" Yuuri greeted him in relief. "Is Quercus coming too?"

"Great nymphs are slow," Tariel muttered.

Garena filled Tariel in on the situation, and his concerns. Tariel blinked – hard – at the revelation that the humans of the forsaken well could travel to the _moon._ Even while Garena still spoke, the angel's eyes began to scan back and forth, staring at the wall at nothing, as was his habit when he reviewed possible futures.

Watching this, Shouri murmured, "_Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin."_ God has written upon the wall that the days of my kingdom are numbered. Only his father Shouma in the room shared enough depth of Western education to scowl at him.

"Time?" Tariel asked.

Garena unpacked this to the merely laconic. "When is your '_takeoff'_, Wolfram?"

"It's _Guy's_ takeoff, not _my_ takeoff," grumbled Wolfram. In irritation, he punched up his pillow against the bed's headboard as a backrest. "A week. Well, no. I guess five mornings from now, if you can call now morning there. This was a surprise to Guy – the plan was for several weeks later. They moved it up."

Tariel continued to read the writing on the wall, so much so that the group snuck nervous peeks at the mutely flowered wallpaper. "It moves forward again. Soushu knows that we know," Tariel said, with clinical detachment. "He forces the pace. Very little time."

"How does Soushu know that we know?" asked Yuuri.

Tariel waved fingers at Garena to provide translation services while Tariel continued his wall contemplation.

Garena expanded, "Soushu doesn't know, yet, Yuuri. This is why the nymphs asked me to investigate. When nymph acts against nymph, both read the future and thwart the other's intent, and the future becomes recursive. Worse, Soushu _interferes_ with mortals."

Yuuri shot him a sour look.

"More than Shinou and Quercus," Garena qualified. "You have seen Soushu take over humans and make them puppets, force them to act against their own best interest. He –" Garena stopped and considered how to explain. "We cannot read the future as we usually do. It does not flow, like a clear stream. It backs up and diverts and eddies, as around two madly busy beavers, trying to prevent each other from building a pond. Confused flow and splashing, clear as mud."

City boy Yuuri looked pained. _Definitely a nymph head-ache forming._

"Tariel can't see much clearly," Wolfram paraphrased, "but he sees that much. Soushu finds out that we know, and the moved-up schedule gets moved up closer. We have less than five days. Is that it?"

"Yes," confirmed Tariel, abruptly breaking off his study of the wallpaper. "Shibuya Shouma. What can stop Guy Tom? Only he can stop. How convince him to stop?"

Yuuri's father Shouma stared at the nymph. They'd never been properly introduced. Shouma hadn't really understood what little had been explained to him of the ... _'nymph situation'._ So Shouma answered the strange not-child with simple truth. "Nothing could convince my cousin Guy to stop a moon launch. It's the chance of a lifetime."

Shouri, Miko, and Yuuri nodded agreement with that assessment.

Wolfram tugged the ear on a Gwendal-stuffed dragon – _bat – _he kept in their bed. He mused, "Would Guy halt the launch if he thought he weren't fit for duty?"

Shouma considered that. "No," he said. "His understudy would go, if Guy considered himself unfit."

And on the Earth they'd known _Before_, that would have been true.

"But we're only concerned about Guy _Maou_ going to the moon, not a human," replied Wolfram. "And if Guy found himself in my head, the way I've been in his, he would think he's going crazy, wouldn't he? That he's not fit for something so stressful?" Wolfram certainly felt that way about himself just now.

Shouma blurt out, "That's _horrible_!"

In a fair marriage, Yuuri should have placated his own parents. But lately he was enjoying a rare _payback_ on Wolfram for all the years of all the _many_ von Bielenfelds, and left placating his parents to his husband. For one of Yuuri's sudden moments of cool clarity and poise had descended upon him.

As Yuuri watched, Tariel disappeared. Garena gulped grimly. He stared at the mute wall. Yuuri moved silently beside him and murmured, "Garena, what is it that you see?"

"Nothing," replied Garena. The tone was flat, but Yuuri felt his dismay.

"Something," suggested Yuuri softly.

Garena shook his head minutely. "I am demon, not nymph. I see nothing compared to them. But Tariel saw something," he whispered. "And denies it."

From a well of feeling he'd never experienced for Garena before, Yuuri put a tender hand on Garena's shoulder, and gave him a warm gaze and nod of understanding. "Conrad. Shouri," Yuuri spoke out firmly. "I want you to go talk to Guy. Garena and I will send you to London."

Garena and Conrad nodded assent. Wolfram frowned.

Shouri objected, "That won't work, Yuu-chan. _I_ can't talk Guy out of a moon shot!"

"No," Yuuri agreed. "But you can create doubt. Doubt enough for him to hear the Wolfram within. Guy's strong-willed," he said to Wolfram. "Just like you." Not that Yuuri remembered Guy well. He'd been a child last time they'd visited Guy at university. But he remembered a young man who resembled Wolfram in looks and arrogance to an uncanny degree. "Conrad and Shouri can help you get through to Guy. Your plan is the best we have, Wolfram. Let's make it work."

Wolfram nodded abstractedly. "Guy's waking up," he reported. With Guy hung over and heading to the bathroom on automatic, it was fairly easy to stay present in Shin Makoku. But already, Wolfram was _both,_ here and there, Wolfram and Guy. He lay back in the bed to conserve his attention.

"You need jeans or something," Yuuri told Conrad and Shouri. "Get dressed for London as quickly as you can, and get back here."

"It's summer there – hot and humid," Wolfram offered.

Yuuri added, "And ah, Conrad... maybe a _discreet_ sword."

Conrad grinned. He led Shouri out to play dress-up.

-oOo-

_"Pfauh!"_ Shouri gagged as they appeared in a garbage and sewage beslimed alley in Soho.

Conrad held a hand over his mouth and forced his own gorge down. "Has London always been...?" Boston and Tokyo were never like this! Steam and flies rose from maggot-writhing piles in the mid-morning sauna.

"Of course not," growled Shouri, pulling himself together decisively. "The sanitation infrastructure's shot. Probably no trash collection, and the sewer pumps unpowered and backing up."

Shouri cast another jaundiced eye at Conrad's attire. The baggie dun cargo shorts, grey rock T shirt black spatter-printed with skulls, and Birkenstocks, were reasonable enough, though Conrad looked a bit old for it. But his concept for a _discreet_ sword was to strap it diagonally across his back, with digital camera gear dangling cheerfully from the front of the buckled black nylon sword strap. Yet Wolfram had OK'd his brother's look for fitting in, and sent Shouri back to change out of his initial fine taupe linen summer suit. Now Shouri was dressed down to plain khaki chinos – long – with a striped mesh golf polo of his father's. Which Wolfram still deemed too _'clean'_ looking. Shouri began to see his point. But it was no use unless Guy found him recognizably _Shouri._

He moved toward the mouth of the alley and looked around the street. "Half-Nelson Pub," he pointed out to Conrad, whose translator-kun couldn't help with literacy.

"Pink," Conrad agreed in amusement. For the street level of the pub Wolfram had given them as a landmark was indeed painted pepto-bismol pink, flanked by boarded-up establishments fronted with lavender and pastel minty green. The sidewalks weren't much cleaner than the alley. Few people comprised the scant traffic on this back street, and they tended to keep their heads down and move briskly.

"Guards," Shouri pointed out the pattern-breakers – two muscular men in dark T-shirts with gun bulges, dark glasses, and dark pants, staying still. One with folded arms held up a lamp post across the street. Another sat on the doorstep a couple doors down.

"That's our destination," agreed Conrad. "Fight our way in?"

Shouri considered the men, and shook his head. "We're here on legitimate business." Conrad shrugged assent, and followed Shouri to Guy's tenement door.

"Excuse us," Shouri said pleasantly, and tried to simply step past the ox-like being on the doorstep, to ring the bell.

"I don't think so," shared the guard, suddenly standing large above him, two steps up and blocking the way. "Shove off."

"My name is Shibuya Shouri, CEO of DTI, Inc. I'm here to see my second cousin, Major Guy Tom. He hasn't heard from his family since _Before._ He'll be very annoyed if you –"

"After the moonshot. If you are who you say you are." The mountain of man beckoned slightly to his partner across the street, who already had a gun out, but was scanning all other approaches.

"You have _heard _of DTI, Inc., haven't you?" Shouri pressed on. "The biobuses? The Chunnel incident?"

"Doesn't matter if you're King Harry himself. Contact the press office."

Conrad pulled back into the street as these two continued to exchange pleasantries, and studied the facade of the building above them. Wolfram said Guy had left for the day early, but Rhys – yes, there was a gaunt-faced hungover man checking out the ruckus from a third floor window.

"Rhys Thomas?" Conrad called up. "I'm here with Shibuya Shouri of DTI. Your guard won't let us by."

"Just a moment," said the hungover Rhys.

It took considerably more than a moment, and Shouri's exchange with the guard graduated to some shoving. But Rhys appeared at the door with a photograph.

"Not the time for this, Dr. Thomas," objected the guard. "After the moonshot –"

"It would mean the world to Major Tom," countered Rhys, comparing the face before him to the photograph. "If true. Parents' names? ID?"

"Shouma and Miko," replied Shouri. He displayed his Japanese passport. "My younger brother is Yuuri. My father and Guy share a German grandfather, native of Dresden, posted to Tokyo in the 1930's. I last spoke to Guy about a month _Before_, to beg him to evacuate to Basel if -"

Rhys cut this off before Shouri could get into any of their family _'demon'_ silliness. Security guards lacked a sense of humor. "Guy's not here. He'll be delighted to hear you're alive, Shibuya-san. Just the other day, he received word of your death from Switzerland. But –" He waved at the guards in explanation. "Security is tight until launch, as you see. Where can he reach you afterwards?"

"He can't," Shouri insisted. "We're leaving England. It's imperative that I speak with him today."

"Don't," the guard insisted to Rhys.

"We can wait for him here," pressed Shouri. "In the street if we must."

"That won't work," said Rhys, avoiding his eye. "Well..." Then to the guard, "Look, you've missed him here, Shibuya-san. But he'll be out running now, and sure to cross the Millenium Bridge about noon –"

"_Doctor Thomas!"_ erupted the guard.

Rhys shrugged unrepentance. "Sorry. He's the only family Guy has. They can hardly organize much of an assault force before noon, can they? Deal with it. Nice to meet you, Mr. Shibuya. Better get a move on."

They skedaddled. Shouri looked back before they turned a corner. Rhys had already fled back inside, and the guard across the street was on a chunky phone. "Calling ahead for our reception committee," he said. "Keep the damned sword sheathed on the bridge if you value our lives, Conrad. They may have snipers in position."

Unhappily, Conrad conceded that Shouri knew better than he how to play the game here. "Do you know the way to this Millenium Bridge?" Shouri pulled out a map to navigate, and they began to run.

-oOo-

Wolfram was getting nowhere at opening an inner dialogue with Guy. The astronaut's pre-coffee automaton period, then his trip to work, and the duller parts of his morning meeting, were lost opportunities, as Wolfram had focused on Shin Makoku to brief Shouri and Conrad. Then, to Wolfram's astonishment, Guy changed into shorts and a T-shirt, and burst out of the bunker at Thames House to run a dozen kilometers before lunch. It was fairly easy to detach from Guy when he was talking about matters strange to Wolfram, or doing automatic things, but easy to get sucked into _being_ Guy by sensation.

It wasn't a _pleasant_ sensation, sneakers pounding pavement with a killer hangover. But it was riveting. Worse, Guy was leaving London this afternoon, possibly forever, though he fought off that thought. Wolfram hadn't realized this _takeoff_ couldn't happen inside the city. Conrad and Shouri had only hours to reach him, and Wolfram couldn't break free to tell Yuuri. His head throbbed with each footfall, until Guy built up to a runner's high –

_Not the ruins of London,_ Guy thought. _Seeds of the next London. In your two thousand years, you've seen worse than this, old friend._ Normally he didn't do this – drag his guards outside to run. But he wanted to see it all today, and God knew he had to sweat the alcohol out of his system. From Thames House – where the ESA and other official organs with modern technology holed up – he'd crossed the river to Lambeth, and headed north toward St. Paul's Cathedral. The running and view were better from this side – Buckingham Palace, Westminster, his head quit throbbing before he passed Big Ben, and by the giant wheel of the London Eye, he was flying, feeling grand. Strange how the modern Eye had been savaged in effigy, but Big Ben still tolled on time with Greenwich.

Guy's mind surged with endorphins and the images from BBC docudramas of how British mastery of longitude had empowered the empire to span the globe. The legacy cheered him. Sometimes it all seemed so damned unlikely. That the rule of technology had passed, the time to shoot for the moon gone forever. But with Big Ben behind him this bright morning, he felt all of British history and empire propelled him forward. _We can do this!_

- _All of __**Bielenfeld**__ history propels me forward! How can this be? Though images on a television, he feels the history of Britain like I feel the heritage of Bielenfeld from remembered snatches of my past lives!_ –

Guy frowned. Bielenfeld? Was that in Saxony? Shouma and Miko had talked him into joining them on a trip to Dresden after German reunification, to seek out their joint pasts, or – who knows what. Dresden was annihilated in the war, and East German stewardship hadn't really improved it. _I'm glad of my German background only for my ties to you. God bless and rest in peace, Shouma, Miko. But I'm a Brit._

- _Shouma's not dead. Shouma, Miko, Shouri, Yuuri, and all the demons. They're here, Guy. Shouri's plan worked. The demon tribe escaped safely back to my world, where they came from. Where you came from._ –

Guy resolutely changed pace, on his stopwatch, two minute cycles, faster, slower. _They're gone. That's just crazy, to think otherwise._

- _Crazy, but true. Shouma and Shouri are alive! Shouri is looking for you right now, in London!_ –

But a wall had descended. Guy, and almost every other survivor of this battered planet by now, knew how to shut the door on the past – firmly. Despite the filth, Guy saw the beauty of the Thames River, gloried in the blue of the sky, felt the ripple of his own muscle, felt the wind of his passing in his hair, and lived in the joy of _Right Now._

But as his little procession of running guards veered onto the lovely crosshatch-suspended Millenium Bridge, a new pack of security men waylaid his man in the lead. Guy slowed to a jog, then a walk. Security pointed to two men standing in mid-bridge, all alone, all traffic across the bridge suspended. His man jogged back to Guy.

"They say your cousin is waiting to meet you, sir. Shibuya Shouri? Came round your flat, and Rhys sent him here, against orders. Shall we run him off?"

"It can't be –"

_- It is!_ Wolfram screamed within. _I told you!_ _And my brother Conrad, from my world!_ –

"No. Thanks. If Rhys sent them, I'll talk to them. Cover me." Guy trusted that last was redundant. Another pack of security was at the far end of the gossamer footbridge. And he was willing to bet they had snipers in position as well. At his morning briefing on moving the launch date forward, security paranoia had set a new record high.

Guy resumed jogging, his original crew of guards tagging along. But as he neared Shouri, his pace faltered. _Good God, it really is Shouri!_ He was walking and blowing by the time he reached them. "Welcome back from the dead, cousin!" He grabbed Shouri for a handshake and embrace. "Ha! And the Swiss confirmed you were dead just yesterday! Where've you been?" He searched Shouri's eyes earnestly. This was usually a dire conversation, welcoming back the presumed-dead, finding out how they'd survived. But Shouri's eyes were... off. He didn't fit.

"Good to see you well, Guy!" Shouri said, earnestly, but... in the wrong way. "Otou-san, okaa-san, Yuu-chan – we were all overjoyed to hear you survived!" He glanced at Guy's guards, who jogged a circle around them on the narrow walkway. "I need a private word."

Guy's eyes narrowed. _Wasn't I just thinking..._ No. "All of you made it?" At Shouri's repeated glances at the guards, Guy relented a little and drew Shouri to the bridge railing.

"_All_ of us, yes. You heard about the biobuses and the Chunnel? It worked, Guy – we're all safe." Shouri glanced at the guards again, and spoke only that which could be overheard. "Twenty thousand. Well, not all." His eyes fell. "Bob and Stella stayed behind in Basel, to protect our assets. I understand they never made it out of the HQ. Tornados."

Guy scowled his disbelief. _"Where _are they safe?"

"Where I said. As I told you."

Guy shook his head in vehement denial.

Conrad joined them tentatively. "Wolfram? Are you there?"

"Yes!" Guy blurted involuntarily. "No! What? Who are you?" _Conrad,_ he thought.

"I'm Conrad, Wolfram's brother," Conrad replied.

Shouri shushed Conrad with a hand. "This is my brother Yuuri's brother-in-law, Conrad Lord Weller. Yuuri's like you – married to a man, Wolfram, Conrad's brother. Wolfram... is inside of you. This is hard to explain."

And unnecessary, for Guy wasn't taking any of it. "What the hell happened to you, Shouri? No – it'll have to wait. Contact me after my mission to the moon –"

"_It can't wait,_ Guy!" Shouri insisted, gritting his teeth at the guards, and lowering his voice again. "Come with us, back to the demon world."

"You're insane. I'm sorry, Shouri, for whatever happened to you. It must have been hell."

Shouri grabbed his arm before he could turn away. "Guy, you _cannot_ go to the purple moon. You _must not. _I can't explain the danger here –"

"Guards," said Guy, gently unhooking Shouri from his arm. "Please treat my cousin kindly. I'd like him detained until after the mission, if possible. And – see if you can get him some help. And his friend."

"We'll be alright, Wolfram," Conrad said directly to Guy. "Good luck, little brother."

And Soushu moved within an ESA security guard who had sold his soul to the devil in his heart, for food for his children. And a red dot of light appeared on Shouri's chest. And Guy dove Shouri onto the ground. And Conrad unsheathed his blade and whirled in a hopeless attempt to deflect a bullet with a sword. And Guy turned and his eyes blazed and he _blew_ the bullet away. And it _plinked _ to the bridge deck, five feet short of them.

"Who's shooting? _Who's shooting?"_ screamed a guard. Another shot rang out, and a sniper toppled from a building. And silence fell on the footbridge. Conrad with bared blade was the only man standing. After a few moments of peace, he carefully let his sword clang to the ground and held open hands out, waist-high.

"I'm calling for an armored car, Major. Run's over," said Guy's lead guard.

Guy nodded slowly, and scrambled off Shouri to sit beside him. "What just happened, Shouri?" he inquired mildly.

Shouri gulped. "I have no idea."

"The shots both came from the sniper who fell off the building," offered Conrad.

A puzzled guard nearby nodded agreement. "Ours," he added.

"That makes no sense," Guy pointed out. He rubbed his brow. "None of this makes any sense."

"You blew that bullet away, Guy Maou," said Shouri. What matter if the guards thought him a lunatic, now? So long as Guy heard him. "Just as Bob could. Just as I could. Listen, Guy, it's important. The purple moon didn't cause the disasters on Earth. The purple moon was created to imprison the evil angels who did this to Earth. By a Maou. And only a Maou can free them again. When I left, when Bob died, _you_ became Maou. You _cannot_ go to the moon and set them free. They'll finish destroying Earth, Guy!"

"Listen to Wolfram within you, Guy," Conrad added. "Please, I beg you. Do not take my little brother with you to that accursed moon."

It wasn't persuasive. It was simply crazy. But it was all they had time for. And it was really all Yuuri had intended, after all. To stick a toe in the door, to open Guy's mind just a crack to hearing Wolfram within, by having real experience in the real world echo the crazy talk within. To create doubt.

Guy stared at the two men. He rose and brushed himself off, and began to walk away. But first, Shouri and Conrad disappeared before his very eyes.

Fortunately for Guy's sanity – unfortunately for Wolfram's plan – the guards saw the very same thing.

-oOo-

_AN: Please review! _


	4. Nominally Sane

**Kyou Kara Maou – Space Oddity**

Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind – an astronaut linked to Wolfram.

_Author's Note: _This chapter dedicated to **JoanaW** and **Methos21** for _reviewing!_ I was afraid no one would read or review anymore, I was on hiatus so long.

I think writing _is_ helping to clear out the writer's block on my life. Thanks!

**Chapter 4 – Nominally Sane**

Wolfram had a long day – as Major Guy Tom, astronaut. Other than a lot of noise and upset and finger-pointing, the inexplicable incident with Shouri and Conrad on the bridge changed nothing. The juggernaut of preparations for the moon launch proceeded on overdrive. Most believed the current outing to Great Yarmouth was the final dry run, not the real thing, though. Security was tight. The northern summer sun was still up, dallying its way along the horizon. But the hour was late and shadows stretched long on summer green croplands. If one didn't look closely, East Anglia appeared prosperous in the yellow light. Few gawkers were still awake at this hour, to point at the convoy bouncing along today's random sample of back roads.

_I hope they don't think they're being invaded,_ Guy thought tiredly_._ A fifteen truck-and-Range-Rover convoy represented inaccessible riches in back-saving diesel fuel, to the farmers they trundled past. Rhys rode in a different vehicle, Guy alone with his trusty guards. Most of them, anyway. The dead sniper's ghost stalked Guy's peace. His replacement drove the car.

_Derek. Widower. Twenty-six. Cute kids. Orphaned kids, now. Why would you shoot, Derek? Shouri was no threat to me. Or if you were aiming for me, you weren't much as a sniper, were you? Didn't have a clear shot either way, come to think of it. And then killed yourself? __**Why?**_

- _Good thing you're Maou, and can use majutsu to stop a bullet, isn't it, Guy? Just as Shouri and Conrad told you,_ Wolfram prodded. –

Guy shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and refused to think about how he stopped that bullet. About his own majutsu. About Shouri and Conrad vanishing. About how he'd seen Shouri's predecessor Maou, Bob, do wind tricks like that, and appear, and disappear. About the new but well-used and archaic sword Conrad left behind. About the voice in his head, that provided Conrad's name before he appeared. _Wolfram._ About the fact he now had a pet name for a voice in his head. About a demon tribe still alive and well in another world. About his husband's drugs. About takeoff. About the dubious quality of space ship manufacture and ground crew these days. About the ESA's launch facilities at Kourou in South America, and the juryrigged replacement at Yarmouth. Yarmouth had North Sea oil rig industry and good windmill power. Kourou seemed farther away than the alien purple moon.

The sheer mass of things Guy refused to think about grew unwieldy. And his priority was to simply be fit for duty. He slumped down in his seat and dozed off.

-oOo-

"Progress?" inquired Yuuri brightly. He'd been reading over a stack of paperwork, in his armchair dragged near their bed at home in Blood Pledge castle. Better about paperwork these days, he still set it aside eagerly as Wolfram stretched and opened his eyes.

"Mm," Wolfram hummed, "alone at last."

"Beg pardon?" asked Yuuri, amused.

"Every time I've woken up here for _days,_ it's like I'm on the slab at an autopsy," Wolfram grumbled.

Yuuri's eyebrows flickered at Wolfram... _sounding like someone else._ But his brow cleared readily enough. "Ah, alone _with me_ at last, you mean? Yeah, it's been a bit of a circus." He intuitively reached to ground Wolfram by clasping his hand, left lying above Wolfram's head on the pillow at stretch's end. "I've missed you." He sheepishly indicated his office work, here in the bedroom at Wolfram's side. "Welcome back. Guy's asleep on the other side?"

"Mmn," Wolfram grumbled. He rattled off a précis of his day in England, and the all too minor fallout of Conrad and Shouri's visit. "I'm getting nowhere," he concluded. He languidly rolled onto his side toward Yuuri, the other raised elbow and waves of blond hair left to fall across his face. "I get sucked into him and lose myself," he complained. "Yet he has no trouble at all shutting me out. Gotta find a way to turn the tables."

With his free hand, Yuuri traced the underarm hollows on Wolfram's side, left charmingly exposed by upflung arm. Wolfram wriggled a little – it tickled – but mostly purred into the caress. "Well, maybe you just need to be yourself a little more," Yuuri suggested.

"Mn, stop, Yuuri," Wolfram objected, starting to gather himself to rise. "I haven't seen the children, or –"

"They're asleep," Yuuri said, "and it can wait. We'll give Ekaterin her bottle at midnight." His exploring hand roamed down to Wolfram's thigh, gently pushing him back down in the bed. As his hand drifted back up, he brought the hem of Wolfram's pink nightgown up along with it. He leaned over to kiss Wolfram's ear and murmur into it, "No way he's going to take you away from me, while I'm making love to you. Hmm?"

Wolfram hardly took any persuading at all.

-oOo-

Asleep, in a Range Rover bouncing along pitted country roads, Major Guy Tom was pulled in by _pure feel. _He made love to his husband Yuuri, in a kingly bedroom on a foreign world. The style of lovemaking was both unfamiliar and entirely to his taste. Even when Wolfram lapped Yuuri's belly with healing flames of passion leading to climax – seed-making – Guy felt the infinite comfort of coming home to his lover.

He entered more of a lucid dreaming phase as he – Wolfram – dallied in pillow talk with Yuuri about people he didn't know. Guy resurfaced as himself enough to note Yuuri's resemblance and contrast with his elder brother Shouri. And mentioned it aloud, as well. "You know, Shouri's not much, but little brother Yuuri's grown up _hot,_" he mumbled.

"Oh, really?" Rhys laughed. "He's dead to the world, lads. Give us a hand into the caravan, won't you?" Rhys and the guards sleep-steered Guy into their humble Yarmouth home away from home, at the Happy Daze Holiday Estates. The _'estates' _were a vast dilapidated trailer park, no longer much in demand with lower income vacationers up from London. Many of the single-wide mobile homes – _'caravans'_ – still hadn't been salvaged, after being washed off their cinder blocks and filled with sand and dead fish and seaweed. But that was a long time ago now. The briny smell these days almost certainly came from the beach and marsh beyond the dunes at the distant edge of the field. Mostly.

Wolfram paused to drink in the strange scene, superimposed on his children's nursery in the late evening summer twilight of England. Coarse windblown grass with giant versions of the babies' building blocks, laid out close in neat lanes, then waded through and tossed about. Probably by his foster daughter Frieda. He shrugged off Guy's nightmare, and happily continued to his darling baby Bertram's crib side.

Guy gazed down at the angelic child with a physical longing to touch the smooth cheek, to cuddle him close. Wolfram knew better than to wake the demon child. But playing with a curl of the fine green-blond hair was safe. Wolfram reluctantly pulled himself away to trade places with Yuuri. Guy repeated the adoration at little Frieda's bedside, to toy with red-gold waves of hair, face so sweet and innocent in sleep.

Even half-asleep himself, climbing into their pushed-together twin beds at Happy Daze Holiday Estates, Guy spoke nothing aloud about the babies. He'd never admitted his longing for a child to Rhys. His husband had covered the topic in third person. They'd had gay friends go through the awkward business of acquiring and raising children. Rhys disapproved, whether couples arranged a child by a surrogate mother, or dishonest marriages ending in divorce and split custody, or worst of all, infidelity. The way Rhys and Guy mentored gay teens in Soho was deeply rewarding. _But to have a child of my own..._

Guy completely lost himself to being Wolfram again as he snuggled against Yuuri in their intimate midnight ritual. He cuddled tiny, exquisite Eurasian Ekaterin, slurping her bottle against his and Yuuri's bare breasts.

"Yuuri?" Wolfram said in a small voice. "I didn't want to say anything with the crowd around before, but... I was pretty hard on you, back then, about your not wanting to be _'gay'_. I'm sorry. It's... different there. Isn't it. I almost feel like going to Günter's late-night gay bath party to get _clean._"

Guy looked at his macabre bon voyage party, the wet t-shirts and paco band and street partying through the beslimed streets of Soho, through Wolfram's eyes, and cringed in his sleep.

Yuuri kissed him tenderly, and said, "Well, underneath, I imagine they love each other, too. A lot about my world is... was... harsher than here. More cruel. I'm glad I chose you. And here."

Feeling understood and comforted – absolved in some obscure sense – Guy at last fell into deep sleep.

-oOo-

Guy attempted a heart-to-heart in bed next morning with Rhys, about his weird erotic dreams and growing concern for his own sanity.

"Erotic? Your wisdom teeth?" the love of his life quipped helpfully. Rhys stuck a finger into the back of Guy's gums and said, "There? Am I making you horny, love?"

"Awl bwigh gyu," warned Guy, and Rhys hastily retracted his finger.

"Tuesday at 8:00," Rhys scolded him. "Your rules, not mine, and I'll hold you to them. All the neurosing we can fit into eight minutes, and not one minute more. Besides, don't you go to a shrink to get cleared for takeoff?" Rhys shrugged. "Leave it to him, then, and quit worrying in the meantime."

"Good point," said Guy, lying back in relief.

- _**Excellent**__ idea!_ exulted Wolfram. _I can get someone __**else**__ to declare you unfit for duty! – _

"They didn't, did they?" inquired Rhys, still up on an elbow appreciating Guy's warm nude form, hand idling down hard six-pack abs, toward less muscular yet also hardening regions. "Try to forbid you sex during training? Because you see, Guy, I am _very_ intrigued by this oral orgasm fantasy. Forget about the demon tribe silliness – can't be empirically verified. But for the sake of science –"

Guy was already slithering down the bed, kissing as he went. And try as he might, Wolfram could not break free from the sensation as he made love to another man – _again!_ And Guy – not normally equipped with quite the same oral anatomy as Wolfram – nevertheless felt everything as Wolfram would have, from his gums down to his curled toes, as he went down on Rhys.

"My, my," Rhys murmured some time later. "Not an _oral_ orgasm, was it? Seems to have been thorough, though."

"It was," Guy said wonderingly, "_also_ like an oral orgasm. This is insane."

"You keep saying that," Rhys observed, "and you're sure to convince yourself of it. How about another interpretation, dear? You have – _always –_ loved – sucking – cock. Darling. And under life-threatening pressure, you have _always_ – gotten – thoroughly – horny. So – why am I not worried about you entertaining yourself with a new cock-sucking orgasm fantasy just now, hm?"

Guy snorted a laugh. "Vested interest?"

"_Deeply_ vested interest," agreed Rhys.

- _Damn you're sane,_ complained Wolfram. _Just my taste in sex, too._

-oOo-

"Hello, Doctor -" Guy entered the psychiatrist's office, then stopped in his tracks. "You're not Dr. Reynolds."

"No, Dr. Reynolds remained in London. I'm Dr. Matthias Bielefeld, just arrived. I'm the German contribution to the launch support team. How can I help you, Major Tom?"

Wolfram frowned mentally. _Dr. Bielenfeld?_

Guy paused, disconcerted. _Why should I object to a different psychiatrist?_ "Bielenfeld. Is that in Saxony?"

"Bielefeld. It's in Ostwestfalen-Lippe." Matthias's British English was flawless until he pronounced German. The doctor took a seat in a burgundy leather armchair, which cozily leaked stuffing. He waved a hand toward the matching lumpy couch and picked up Guy's medical records, which he'd apparently been reviewing. The furniture would have looked quite at home in a wood-paneled dark room, with swagged draperies in a rich brocade. In the single-wide trailer with mauve floral wall vinyl, it just looked odd. "Though I'm from Düsseldorf. You?"

"Am I supposed to lie down?"

"Why, are you tired?"

"Ah, no."

"London."

"What?"

"You're from London," Matthias clarified.

"Oh. Yes."

"Why did you bring up Saxony?"

"My grandfather was from Dresden. I – heard the word Bielenfeld earlier this week. Thought I might have recognized it from a trip to Dresden. You know, hunting my past. On my mother's side."

"My name is _Biel__**e**__feld_, not _Biel__**en**__feld_. Not that it matters," said Matthias. "They told me about the resemblance – it really is striking."

"What?" said Guy, then finally took in the other man's appearance. Of near-equal middling height, the doctor was older, and his hair cut longer, but in the same shade of gold, beginning to silver at the temples. His features, green eyes, and overall heart shape of the face were all similar to Guy's own. "I hope you're not going to tell me you're my real father?"

- _Father?_ thought Wolfram. _No... oh, hell... -_

"If I were, this would be a singularly bad time to bring it up, wouldn't it?" suggested Matthias.

Guy laughed. "Yes, thanks."

Matthias grinned. "I'm not old enough to be your father. So, I repeat – what can I do for you, Major Tom?"

"I'm afraid I'm losing my mind."

"Perfectly natural," replied Matthias.

"What?"

Matthias set the dossier aside. "What exactly is causing you concern?"

- _He's going to find the beginning and ending and boundaries of it, _groaned Wolfram. -

"Well, it began –" Guy began, frowned at Wolfram's alien thought, and resumed, "with, um, the sudden reappearance of my cousin yesterday."

"The Millenium Bridge incident?" said Matthias. "The security chief sent several of your companions to see me this morning."

"And what did you decide?" asked Guy, in curiosity.

"Well..." Matthias clicked off a digital recorder on the coffee table between them, making it look like he was just fidgeting with it. "I should share that I'm a fellow DTI. I knew Bob and Shouri well. I was in Afghanistan with _Medecins Sans Frontieres _at the time, and missed the DTI boat. As it were." He looked up at Guy with a crooked grin. "So I was less surprised than your guards were." He clicked the recorder back on, and sat back. "The guards are fine."

_- Damn you, Chichiue!_ -

"And the sniper?"

"I tend to the living, and leave the dead to forensics. I recommend you do the same."

"Chichiue –"

"What?"

"Um, _Doctor_, may I?" and Guy clicked the recorder back off. "Shouri said they made it – all of them."

Matthias clicked the recorder back on. "Have you considered what it would be like for Shouri, to have herded all the DTI into clumps – our _family – _only to get them all killed? You don't need to be a psychiatrist to understand survivor guilt, Major. We _all_ understand survivor guilt, hm? Did Shouri strike you as alright in all other particulars? Saying fully rational things?"

"Well, no, actually, he kind of went raving on the topic of the moon at the end there."

"There you have it. So what else is bothering you?"

"I've been hearing a voice in my head."

Matthias motioned for him to elaborate.

"It told me that the man with Shouri yesterday was named Conrad – then there appeared a man named Conrad."

Matthias shrugged. "Is that all?"

"Well... just more... like that."

"The voice isn't telling you to shoot anyone? Harm yourself or others? That you're evil, or have to wash your hands multiple times? Just... insights and such? Maybe something that seems psychic?"

"Yeah..."

"'_There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'_," Matthias quoted Hamlet. "There is no reasonable doubt that psychic phenomena _occur_, Major. Especially under stress. They're just not understood, nor very reliable. Anything else bothering you? Specifically – you said you were afraid you were losing your mind."

"Well, I had a dream last night..."

"Yes?"

"Um, it was erotic."

"Good for you. I haven't gotten any myself lately, so I'd rather not hear about it. Anything else?"

Guy stared at the doctor. "Are you really a psychiatrist?"

"No, G.P. actually. My specialty _Before_ was performance medicine – mostly sports, but anyone trying to perform at their very best. Used DTI scholarship money to do extra residencies, including surgery, psychiatry,etc. _After._.. I've specialized in helping people recover from post traumatic stress. Get them out of psychosis, stop beating their wives and children, get back to productive lives, sort of thing."

Guy considered the endemic crazed street population of London these days. "Important work," he murmured. "God bless. But is there... also a psychiatrist on staff now?"

"No. Just me. What makes you think you need a psychiatrist?"

"I feel like Shouri – this voice in my head – the sniper – they're all trying to tell me not to go on this moon shot."

"Of course," agreed Matthias.

"What?"

"Well, it's an insane thing to do, isn't it? Climb into a tin can on a rocket and get shot up into the frigid vacuum of space? But you're a seasoned test pilot – you do these insane things for a living. And I'm a doctor who's traveled into hell-holes to treat women whose brothers want to kill me. Some would consider us insane. Yet they'd find no historical shortage of soldiers willing to go get their nuts shot off. Nor of wild-eyed adventurers.

"Let me ask you, Major Tom – what would you say if I told you that your understudy for this mission, Major Lefevre, came in and told me he'd sold his soul to the devil for food during the first famine winter _After_?"

"Who wouldn't have? I hope he got a good price."

Matthias nodded. "Did you? Sell your soul to the devil?"

Guy smiled crookedly. "I tried to sell my virtue once or twice, but couldn't get the price of bread for it."

Matthias chuckled. "Good answer."

_Pause._

"Doctor, what would it take to _fail_ this interview?"

Matthias shrugged. "Still breathing? Joking aside, Major, you have no understudy, and I find nothing wrong with you. You're a nominally sane man, about to deliberately do something crazy, and it's got your adrenaline up. Don't let the funk get you. You're fine."

"No understudy. You weren't kidding about Michel Lefevre?"

"Umm, Major Lefevre broke his wrist. He's returning to London. He'll be fine, not to worry."

- _You're lying, Chichiue! So what did this Lefevre do, fall to the ground foaming at the mouth? –_

Guy primly ignored this thought. Whatever happened – if anything – between Lefevre and the doctor was confidential. "_'Nominally'_ sane?" he echoed.

"Isn't that what they say in the astronaut business? _'All systems are nominal'?_ Within normal operating parameters. Something uncivilized and jarring happened yesterday, Major, while you were already keyed up for the gamble of a lifetime. Hungover, too, to judge by this urine test. All of us have experienced uncivilized and jarring events, of catastrophic proportions. A little voice inside your head is reminding you that such things rather suck. And it's true - they _do _rather suck_._ _However. _Sometimes we choose to dust ourselves off and be brave again _anyway_. Do you believe in the mission you're about to embark on, Major?"

"Yes. With all my heart."

"Good. God bless. Make us proud, Major. Let's get you a shot of B vitamins on the way out, though, hm? Help clear that hangover out of your system before the lau – um, systems test."

- _Damn you, Chichiue!_ thought Wolfram. But he'd known it was a lost cause the moment he recognized Matthias as an alternate-world version of his father Manfred.

-oOo-

_AN: Please review! _


	5. Incredible

**Kyou Kara Maou – Space Oddity**

Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind – an astronaut linked to Wolfram.

_Author's Note: _This chapter dedicated to **DemiDaemon, aicyel, methos21, **and** JoanaW** for _reviewing!_

Sorry for another hiatus. Writing did help get my writer's-block-on-life unstuck for a while. Let's try it again... ^^

**Chapter 5 – Incredible**

"Hi, there! Mind if I come in?" The question was rhetorical. Wolfram's liege-lord and stepfather, Aldrich Lord Bielenfeld, had already opened the bedroom door to ask, and stepped in without waiting for an answer. He dumped a large wooden box – complex with little doors and leather latches and drawers and handle, gaily painted with veggies and flowers – by the door. He strode smiling to Wolfram's bedside.

"Ah, Lord Bielenfeld!" Yuuri stood to greet him with a smile, extending a hand. "Ah – were we expecting you?"

"Sire!" Aldrich halted at attention, and bowed.

"Ah, no, call me Yuuri," Yuuri reminded him.

"Call me Aldrich, and I'll call you Yuuri," Aldrich reminded him, with a lop-sided grin. "Shouma, Shouri, good to see you again. And you, fox kit," he said to Wolfram, taking a seat in the spot Yuuri'd just risen from. "Uncle Garena's been telling me of your wild adventures in bed."

Wolfram's eyes nearly crossed before he realized that Aldrich meant his alter-ego adventures, had while in bed, not... his alter-ego's adventures in bed. "Ah, oh?"

Aldrich's dimple grew deeper at Wolfram's consternation. But he nonchalantly summoned his majutsu signature – a wind-sculptured cypress tree, in fire – in his palm for focus, then scanned a hand over Wolfram from head to toe. His elegant healing majutsu couldn't be more unlike his uncle's cavalier fireblast.

Aldrich grinned. "Your alter-ego is a runner, isn't he? Your legs are twitching. I got the better end of that deal with _my_ alter-ego, Aldrich Maou. He complains bitterly about my gymnastics. But he's put on a couple inches around the chest and biceps, and taken off a few in the gut, without getting up off the couch himself. Probably why he keeps popping in to visit me during my morning workouts. Vain man. Not like me at all!" His eyes twinkled. "If you want revenge, Wolfram, try a duel with Conrad. A good hour of knocking swords about will leave _him_ twitching!"

Wolfram smiled, tentatively at first, but building in confidence. It felt good to imagine having the upper hand for a change, rather than getting dragged about at Guy's whim.

"You've continued... communications with the other Aldrich?" Yuuri asked.

"Yes, almost daily," Aldrich agreed. "That's why Uncle Garena asked me to come visit. He thought my perspective might help Wolfram with – Guy Tom, is that the name? Any progress this morning?"

Wolfram reported the latest one step forward, two steps back, of building rapport overnight, then having the _other_ Manfred convince Guy he was sane. Focused as he was on the frustration of being foiled by his alternate-world father,Wolfram neglected to mention Matthias' real name, or that he was DTI.

"Mm, good for Manfred!" said Aldrich, lips pursed. "Your plan, fox kit, wasn't ethical. Trying to convince a man he's insane, just as he's about to risk his life in an heroic undertaking. For shame."

Wolfram rolled his eyes a little toward Yuuri in entreaty. _Save me from my devout liege-lord!_

But Yuuri's father Shouma pounced. "Exactly what I've been saying! This – this – _undermining_ my cousin – it's beneath contempt!"

Aldrich nodded in sympathy. "_'The ends justify the means'_ is the fast way to pave the road to hell with good intentions. Well, anyway, _that's_ over with. What's the new plan?" he asked brightly.

"We hadn't given up on the old plan," grumbled Wolfram.

"You have now," asserted Aldrich. Shouma nodded emphatically. Aldrich chided, "You cannot fight evil with deceit, Wolfram. Soushu is evil. Every time you try to trick Guy, you play directly into Soushu's hands, somehow. Maybe you'll never know how. But it's a certainty. _So._ Where is our common ground with this Guy Tom? What does he want? What do we want?"

"He wants to go to Soushu's purple moon," growled Wolfram. "We want him not to."

"OK," Aldrich allowed. "Superficially, it appears we're at cross purposes. But _why_ does he want to go to the purple moon? _Why_ do we want him not to?"

"His people want to understand the purple moon, and what happened to their world," said Yuuri, earning a glower from Wolfram for getting into the spirit of Aldrich's analysis. "They think the appearance of the purple moon caused two billion deaths from the weather disasters."

"Two billion - ?" Aldrich shook his head in disbelief. "There can't be that many people...?" But Shouri and Shouma nodded confirmation. "That's... amazing. That's horrific. Who can blame them? For wanting to understand the cause of such a catastrophe. Such a shame, that they have it exactly backward. The moon was the solution to their disasters, not the cause. Has this been explained to him?"

"I... tried," said Shouri. "You don't understand, Lord Aldrich. Our people on Earth... They couldn't believe you if you told them."

"Why not?"

"There is no magic there, Aldrich," said Yuuri. "Or, at least, they don't believe there is. What you call _'empiricism'_, is all they'll believe."

Yuuri's father Shouma shook his head. "Even science isn't believed very quickly, Yuu-chan. It can take years. It used to take centuries."

Aldrich pondered this. "I'm an empiricist. But for the most part, others don't repeat my experiments. They can't – they don't have the skills. Instead, they take my word for it. Surely you don't mean they _all_ have to do the experiments for themselves? Will they all fly to the moon, then?"

"Of course not," said Shouri. "They take the word of experts, just like here. The ESA – the organization sending Guy to the moon – has credibility."

"And so does Guy?" Aldrich prompted.

"Guy and his husband Rhys," Wolfram grudgingly allowed. "Rhys is the empiricist – _'physicist'_ – behind this project. The science expert."

"Excellent, so we have one person Guy will believe – Rhys," concluded Aldrich. "And you, Yuuri – will he believe you?"

"Ah, I was a little kid the last time I met Guy," Yuuri confessed. "He wouldn't even recognize me."

"Shouri? Shouma?"

Shouri folded himself into his arms and looked dejectedly down at his shoes. Shouma answered, "Shouri blurted out the truth like a lunatic. Yuuri snatched him back before the ESA could lock him up."

"I was in a tearing hurry," Shouri defended himself. "I didn't have _time_ to be credible!"

"So Shouri's credibility is spent," said Aldrich, simply keeping track. "Shouma, do you have any credibility with Guy or Rhys?"

"Plenty!" blurted Shouma.

"And do I have credibility with you, Shouma? You've only heard it from your sons." Yuuri and Shouri twitched. But Aldrich found it reasonable that one might doubt one's sons. He caught and held Shouma's gaze. "Do you believe me when I tell you that it took Yuuri, Cecilie, Shinou, and I – all four of us exerting full Maou powers – to evict a band of evil angels from our worlds? That their leader Soushu, archangel of oceans, caused your world's weather to kill billions? That the new purple moon is essentially their prison, the force keeping them away from us?"

Aldrich's gaze pressed upon Shouma with his multiple powers – the Maou's powers which hadn't left him, the healing power of the unconditional love he taught, his overwhelming pure faith, his nascent power of an angel-to-be, and his sheer force of personality. It was impossible to meet Aldrich's gaze and doubt him.

But Shouma was a canny and experienced international man of business. He broke off his gaze and glanced at his sons. Whom he believed in, or at least in their potential. This belief was more a matter of principle than day-to-day credulity. His eyes came to rest apologetically on Yuuri. "Not entirely," Shouma admitted. "Yuu-chan... In the real world? Can you express what all... _this_... is, in the real world?"

Aldrich nodded a verdict of fair-enough, while Yuuri grasped at straws how to explain. "Yuuri, do you have anything evil down in the vaults?"

"Ah, yes. Of course," agreed Yuuri. "Shall I go...?"

"Evil in a force field?" asked Aldrich. "Enclosed in a bubble of power, to keep it from harming anyone here in the castle?"

"Of course," Yuuri agreed.

"What color is the bubble?" prompted Aldrich.

"Ah – purple," Yuuri said, finally catching on. "Just like my cape." He fingered his _'shawl of Maouitude'_. "Ah, is that why this thing is purple?"

Wolfram's face fell into his hand as he shook his head in disgust. _"Idiot..."_

Aldrich was merely amused. "Yes. The Maou's loving powers shield us from evil. Point being, Shouma – if I, or Yuuri, encase something benign in a force field, it will be clear. Some things are murky – mixed good and evil. True evil, captured by magical force, glows purple. We could demonstrate if you'd like. Here are some seeds – pure good." He took a pouch of seeds from around his neck, spilled them in his hand to show Shouma, then wrapped them back up. Then he tossed the seed pouch into the air. In mid-room, he caught it with a magical force bubble. It shone a lovely pure white, hanging there suspended. Aldrich walked over and burst the bubble to snatch back his pouch and hang it on his neck again. "Sorry, I don't carry anything evil around with me. If you want, Yuuri can show you down in the vaults."

"So it's not really – physically – a purple moon," said Shouma, brow furrowed. "Like if you went there, it wouldn't be a pockmarked plain of purple moon dust."

"Ah..." said Yuuri.

"Well, I've never been there," allowed Aldrich. "But more likely it's a world covered in water and trees and the like, just like here. Soushu was an ocean nymph, and he brought tree nymphs along with him."

Shouma's credulity burst on this, much like Aldrich's force bubble had burst on his hand. "You should leave that part out, when we explain to Rhys and Guy," Shouma advised.

"Ah -?" said Yuuri.

"Otou-san!" Shouri objected. "You and Lord Aldrich can't – "

"Of course we can," Aldrich said affably. "You did. Wolfram, when can we catch Guy, and maybe Rhys, away from the doubting horde?"

"The doubting horde inhabits the entire _world,"_ Wolfram grumbled.

Aldrich shrugged. "Find out what their plans are for the day. You've built enough rapport for that."

Wolfram's eyes flew wide in surprise. But then he tried as Aldrich suggested, and found – _yes._ He could quietly ask within, and find he knew Guy's answer. Wonderingly, he reported, "Guy's going out for a run in a couple hours. He's promised to pick up berries for Rhys at the farm market in town."

Aldrich beamed. _"Perfect!_ I'll bring my seed sample box to market! Everyone likes to buy seeds."

"Is that what that is..." Wolfram murmured, staring at the decorated wooden box Aldrich had dumped by the bedroom door. He doubted any man in the room had ever bought a seed in his life. _Well. No doubt we would have if Aldrich was selling them._

"Why do you have a seed sample box with you, Aldrich?" Yuuri couldn't help asking.

"Oh, I've been meaning to bring it next time I came down to Blood Pledge," said Aldrich. "A lot of the Earthlings will need to farm, of course, and crops grow best for the people who love them. And it's comforting, isn't it, to eat familiar vegetables. Cecilie seemed to think the Earthlings were put off by my color choices." Aldrich seemed vexed by this last, an artist stung by unjust criticism. "Thought I'd show the prospective farmers some options, revise the colors if need be, help them look forward to spring planting."

Wolfram stared at him in disbelief. Yuuri, however, still remembered bad days in his early years here, when Shin Makoku purple lettuce salad just seemed to add insult to injury. He hadn't realized the weird colors were Aldrich's doing. Though his plantation did grow Bielenfeld's seed crops. He nodded in bemusement. "Very thoughtful. Thank you, Aldrich."

Shouma didn't greatly care. He just wanted to go back to Earth and talk to Guy himself. Before his sons could muster any further objections, he hustled Aldrich out to play dress-up.

-oOo-

Guy dove into the North Sea surf, and Wolfram submerged into him by _pure feel_ again. Already hot and high from running the Yarmouth shore in the sultry July humidity, the shock of cold water felt heavenly. Guy set out in a strong crawl toward the buoys that marked the protected swimming area. His guards stayed on shore with their guns trained around him, more concerned about the recent shark infestation than nut-jobs, this time. Guy let them, in complete unconcern, too high on endorphins to worry about sharks, or anything else. Visiting Dr. Bielefeld this morning had taken a load off his mind. Now, he delighted in the power of his own muscles, the diamond brilliance of sun on water droplets, the odd surges of the waves against his flanks, the mysteries of summer-fertile waters hiding gray depths. The nets suspended from the buoys would keep out the sharks, or they wouldn't. With a laugh of joy, he flipped over by the buoys to swim backstroke along them for the next length. Through the summer haze, the sky beckoned blue above him. For a moment, his concerns about the moonshot left him. He felt the simple childlike wonder of curiosity. _What's up there?_

A rifle shot rang out, shattering his reverie. Guy flopped back on his stomach again. A quick glance showed no shark fins between himself and his guards. But there was thrashing water behind and to the left. He put his whole back into his strongest crawl stroke back to shore, an adrenaline rush turbo-charging strong kicks and diving arms.

– _Maybe a sword match with Conrad would __**not**__ leave Guy's muscles twitching, _reflected Wolfram. He was a strong swimmer, but nowhere near this fast. The sudden fear-of-shark had loosened his submergence into Guy. Wolfram considered herbivorous sharks beautiful and friendly, often a help to sailors in need. Though, he seemed to recall Yuuri felt otherwise. –

Guy heaved himself onto the wet sand at water's edge, mouth hanging open, torso heaving with great gasps of air. He spun to look out where he'd been. The guard may have meant well, shooting a shark. But he'd set off a feeding frenzy. A half dozen triangular fins slapped around a gory cauldron, as sharks tore each other apart. The neatly spaced perimeter buoys now had an obvious, wide gap.

"Right then," Guy gasped. "No more swimming this trip." His guards chuckled nervously. Guy took a couple hesitant steps back into the surf – to wash off the sand – then thought better of it. "Let's go," he said instead, and took off running barefoot up the beach toward the village. One of the guards grabbed up his sneakers.

Hearts still pounding from more than a good run, nerves ajangle, the group wasn't in the most receptive state of mind when they neared the open-air village grocery market. This amounted to a handful of tables and hand-carts sporting spotty produce, at the foot of a wrecked and abandoned amusement wharf. Guy caught himself – Wolfram, really – staring through the shattered windows of the carousel house, at the once-shiny merry-go-round horses, now weathering, some fallen off the ride. Wolfram loved horses, and they looked so dejected. Guy shook his head to clear out the cobwebs.

"Ruckus," warned one of the guards, as Guy bent to pull his running shoes on over sandy feet. The guards closed up around Guy.

– _Magenta! _the Wolfram within laughed out loud. Aldrich's hair was a natural mix of sky blue streaks in bright ash blond. Rather than bleach out the blue, he camouflaged his inhuman coloring by adding a few obviously fake magenta highlights. He'd mentioned before that he did that sometimes _'to fit in at parties'_, even in Bielenfeld, but Wolfram hadn't seen it before. Weirdly, this worked, not only for the hair, but also to distract attention from the fact that the lavender tint around his oddly shaped huge green eyes wasn't makeup, either. But - _**This**__ is how you gain __**credibility**__? _ –

Guy didn't understand his urge to laugh, but at least it lightened his mood from the adrenaline hangover. The ruckus was centered on a couple of middle-aged men. Despite his guards' misgivings, Guy drew near, to see what the carnival-caller with the gaudy three-color hair was hawking.

"Delicious and unique, _heirloom_ vegetables and fruits! That's right, _guaranteed_ to breed true! Madam, _you_ look a fine judge of a fine vegetable! Have a taste test, of my –" Aldrich paused, hand in air sketched an elaborate flourish, then held up strips from a brilliant hot pink pepper, making it look like a stage magic trick. " – _Delicious_ sweet peppers?" He handed pepper strips to a once-attractive, now-faded woman and her two dispirited children. The children's eyes lit up as they tasted the sweet treat.

The children tugged at her _buy-it-buy-it-Mommy,_ but she replied, "I don't have money for –"

"No need!" cried the man. He addressed the whole audience. "I'm _giving_ these seeds away! Next year when I come through again, you'll know for a _fact_ how much you want to buy from me!" He turned to the tired woman again. "Here, Madam! For you and your children. And as a special bonus," he fished around in the pouch at his neck, and pressed a single large bright-green seed into her hand, and closed her fingers around it. "_That_ you should plant at the north end of your vegetable patch. Just an inch deep. Plant it this evening, no need to wait. A mystery tree. Don't cut it down! It grows _fast, _and will make everything else in your garden _thrive!"_ He lowered his voice and held her eyes, still touching her hand clutching the seeds. "Because you _deserve_ something to go right today. Don't you, beautiful?" He winked at her. His eyes told her she was as beautiful as ever. Her gray hair and ragged clothes couldn't fool _him!_

The woman blushed and laughed, stammered thanks and turned away. Her eyes squeezed half-closed from the unaccustomed smile pushing up her sagging cheeks.

Guy wanted to kiss the man for making her feel that way, she who all too clearly had felt flattened, not flattered, for years. Actually, he wouldn't half mind kissing the guy anyway, he thought, appraising his tight blue jeans, fresh linen poet blouse, and newer good leather sandals, on perfectly pedicured feet. _Gay, definitely,_ Guy decided. If he weren't gay, he'd be too clean-looking. But gay men worked harder at that.

So did Asians, he mused. The other man at the centered of the crowd was Asian, with excessively _clean_ mesh striped golf polo, over inexplicably matching plaid bermuda shorts. Hunter green and gold stripes, and that shade of perfectly clean off-white, matched _precisely_ between striped shirt and plaid shorts. Perfectly fit darts over a nice ass, too. At some level, he felt uncomfortable thinking this way about the man's fine posterior, but he couldn't imagine why. His husband Rhys certainly wouldn't mind – the physicist was a great conoisseur, with an elaborate scoring system. _But the Asian isn't gay. My cousin Shouma used to –_

Another farmer pushed forward to take the tired woman's place. "Wot's 'ere then?" he said, pointing at a large, shiny, orange, zebra-striped pear-shaped item. The Asian turned to hand it to him with a bland chameleon smile.

"Shouma?" Guy breathed. "I need to talk to those hawkers!" he demanded of his guards.

The crowd noticed Guy at last. "Hey, it's moon man!" "The astronaut!" "Get back, then, don't crowd him!" "Can we get your autograph, Major Tom?" "When's the test, then, Guy?" Guy's guards interjected themselves and gently moved the other customers away, so Guy could approach Shouma and the seed-hawking carnie.

"Shouma! Is it really you?" Guy seized him by both arms to look him over.

"Guy! Thank God you're alright! I was so worried about you!" said Shouma, and folded him into a brief man-hug. Shouma's cheeks looked sore from the smiling too, as he released the hug. "I hear you're going to the moon! So proud, Guy, so proud! We all are."

"We...?" Guy echoed, still stunned.

Shouma mistook the question. "Ah! My friend Aldrich von Bielenfeld." He clapped Aldrich on the back to draw him into the conversation. "My cousin, Major Guy Tom. _Astronaut._"

One could bathe in the warm waves of family pride and approval wafting off Shouma. And Guy soaked it right up. He didn't like to feel needy, but cousin Shouma had always done his orphan heart a world of good. And why? This Japanese cousin owed him nothing. Surely the relationship was too distant to feel obligation. But Shouma and Miko had always taken him on willingly, eager to compensate for Guy's lack of other family.

The gay hunk with particolored hair extended a hand to shake. Guy's brow creased slightly. _Did he say 'Bielenfeld'?_ "You made quite a hit with your seeds, Herr von Bielenfeld," Guy offered politely.

The captain of the guards interrupted further pleasantries. "We're on a schedule, Major."

"Yes. Quite. But – Shouma, Aldrich, why don't you come along and join us for tea? Rhys will be delighted to see you again, Shouma."

Toodling their way back up to the Happy Daze Holiday Estates, Wolfram managed to stay fairly self-aware. And utterly frustrated. Aldrich talked gardening with several of the guards, who turned out to be enthusiastic amateurs. Shouma kept the conversation entirely on Guy and how his life had gone _After, _without saying anything about the Shibuya family. Why he was here? "To see _you,_ of course!" _How does he do that?_ _**Why**__ does he do that? Why don't they get __**on**__ with it?_

But his elders – well, alright, Shouma was technically younger than Wolfram, but just as middle-aged as Aldrich, who really was over twice Wolfram's age – his elders took their time. They let Guy and guards grow comfortable with them. Aldrich and his new gardening buddies got held up at the gate, as the guards there inspected his bizarre box. The rest continued to Guy's caravan. Shouma helped Rhys set up a barbecue for supper, while Guy sluiced off in the outdoor shower – standard equipment on a beach bungalow. Just a muggy summer's evening, all the time in the world.

Guy had time to reflect in the shower. He rejoined the group at the picnic table thinking much the same thing as Wolfram – it was high time Shouma explained what he was doing here. But then he saw Dr. Matthias Bielefeld walk by a few caravans away, and on a hunch, waved him over. "Dr. Bielefeld! Won't you join us?"

"Matthias!" Shouma cried in delight. The two men greeted each other much the same way as Shouma had greeted Guy, to Guy's surprise. Complete with, "Thank God you're alright! I was so worried about you! I tried and tried to get through on the phone, had help from the US army and everything! How on earth did you get out of Afghanistan?"

Matthias' eyes narrowed in thought. "Yes, I got your video mail and emails, eventually... I got lucky. About ten days _After_, ran into some UN observers with a plane and an unconscious pilot. So I tended the pilot, and flew them out myself. Took a couple months. Lot of hops between there and Europe – Karachi, Oman, Dubai, wonderful long layover in Crete." They laughed. "So. How did you get here from Tokyo, Shou-san?" Matthias asked point-blank.

"Were you in Tokyo?" Guy asked. "I wasn't sure."

"Yes, but it's been a while," Shouma evaded. "Kind of DTI business, you know, Matthias?"

Matthias' eyes narrowed further.

"Oh, are you a _'demon'_ too, Matthias?" Rhys asked.

Matthias looked to Guy for guidance. Guy said, "I told Rhys _'DTI'_ stands for _'Demon Tribe International'_." He laughed. Matthias, Shouma, and Aldrich obligingly laughed, too. "But, Shouma... How _did_ you get here, from Tokyo? What have you been doing _After?_"

Shouma's eyes flicked to Rhys and the guards, as his only answer. And became busy loading up plates with shark kebabs and orange zebra eggplant slices from the grill. Eventually, the guards were fed and persuaded to wander away, leaving the men alone at last.

Guy finally got down to it. "Shouma? Your son Shouri was here yesterday. He was insane."

Shouma glanced at Rhys, and shrugged. "Sounds crazy. He told me what he said. Granted, he didn't say it _well._ But it's the truth, Guy."

"You saw Shouri. After the incident yesterday. When. Where," demanded Matthias.

"I saw Shouri... just minutes after you saw him. At Yuuri's house. He's there right now." Dead silence descended on the table, which clearly puzzled Rhys. Shouma continued, "And I'll see him again this evening, when we leave you."

"At Yuuri's house," Guy repeated in disbelief. "Which is where, exactly?"

"Right where it's always been. Don't you remember the invitations Shouri sent out? All of DTI was invited, to take refuge there. At Yuuri's. Almost all of DTI took him up on the offer. Twenty thousand." He added sadly, catching both Matthias' and Guy's eyes, "We missed you."

Guy folded his napkin and thumped it down to the table. "Rhys. Shouma is trying to tell me, that DTI evacuated all twenty thousand DTI _'employees'_ and family, to another world. Where his son Yuuri is some kind of fairy king."

"An alternate universe," Aldrich piped up, before Matthias and Guy could get any angrier, or Rhys react at all. "Rhys, there are four alternate universe versions of this world, Earth, that I know of. The so-called _'demon tribe'_ comes from my world. Ah, actually, at that time, the other _three_ alternate worlds I know of, were one. So at that time, I know of only two alternate universes – this one, and mine." Oddly, this quibble of detail seemed to soothe Rhys. "I imagine there are any number of others. But the ones who know, aren't very forthcoming. Anyway. We knew that your world was in terrible danger – of exactly what happened. Our king Yuuri invited our people – DTI – to come back to our world for safety. Most came. Guy and Matthias missed the... boat."

"Enchanting," said Rhys, reaching for the jug of wine to top up his glass. "So this is some kind of branching-universe fantasy, right? This world and yours diverged sometime in the past. Then these two other universes diverged, sometime later. What exactly was the point of divergence, by the way? Between your world and mine."

Guy was stunned. His husband was treating this as a fun dinner table gedanken experiment. The trouble was... _this_ part of Aldrich's story... was the truth. Or at any rate, what Guy had been taught growing up. By his mother – a German supermodel who married a British RAF officer – and by Bob. Bob, who could appear and disappear and magically control wind.

"Well," Aldrich answered Rhys, "I'm not entirely sure. The... _ones who know_, I was referring to before... call this world _'the well forsaken of the angels'._ Those _'ones who know'_, incidentally, are angels. So, if that's to be believed, at some point, the angels left this world to the mortals, to face whatever fate mortals brought on themselves. While in my world, the angels stayed around. For a while. Then they got... locked up. That's when some demons came here. That was four thousand years ago, my time, and something less than that here. Twenty-five hundred years ago, I think. So our worlds must have diverged some time before that."

Matthias and Guy exchanged glances with Shouma. _Angels? What's this crap about angels?_ There had been no _'angels'_ in the story good little DTI children were taught.

But Rhys nodded, affably enough. "Angels. Well, that's true, our histories don't mention much in the way of angels for... oh, I dunno. Guy, how long has it been since recorded angels?" Guy shook his head. "I think there have been a few religions who claimed angel visitations more recently. But our local mainstream clubs – Judeo-Christianity – haven't mentioned angels in human affairs for maybe five thousand years, give or take. So alright, no angels. How does this make your world different from mine?"

"Magic," said Aldrich. "You don't have much here." He took a knife from the table, sliced open his wrist to a gusher of arterial blood, then healed it, and casually put the knife down.

Matthias and Guy rose in reaction so fast that their shared picnic bench toppled backward. They slowly righted it and sank back down.

Aldrich continued. "We still have lots of magic in our world. There are humans there, too, who have little magic. And the demons here have interbred heavily with humans, so most have little magic. But the demon lords of my world, and the leaders of DTI here, have magic."

"Quite a party trick," Rhys replied. There was still blood on the table. Guy reflected that Rhys must have been very high indeed to be so calm. Guy's heart was pounding, and Matthias seemed shaken, too. Shouma, though... During the talk of angels and divergent universes, Shouma looked like Matthias and Guy – news to him, and following Aldrich's discussion somewhat less well than the drunk and drugged Rhys.

But the knife and healing hadn't surprised Shouma at all.

"I have lots of party tricks. Guy, Matthias – I'm a Maou on my world – not _the_ Maou, but a spare. Like Guy. Who has party tricks, too." Aldrich snapped his fingers, and a stubby candle stuck in a wine jug sprung to life on the table. It hadn't been lit – it was still bright summer evening, hours before dark, although thunderclouds suddenly seemed to be massing on the horizon.

Aldrich waved to the candle, in invitation, challenging Guy. Guy, sitting five feet from the candle, blew lightly, and the candle went out. "Your point?" Guy bit out.

"Simply that you believe in magic," Aldrich said. "Your husband doesn't."

"Oh, I thought they were perfectly good magic tricks," Rhys allowed. "I don't suppose you're going to tell us how you did the one with the arterial blood? No? Thought not. So how does one travel between your universe and ours, then? Rabbit and a tophat?"

"Only the Maou – top demon king – of each world, and the angels themselves, can arrange that," said Aldrich. "Well, maybe I could, as a spare Maou. I've never tried."

"And yet, you are here."

"Yes, Shouma's son Yuuri transported us. He'll be along presently to pick us up again. The more important thing right now is about another one of the alternate worlds, the most recent one. We created it about two months ago our time. Two and a half years ago in your universe."

"The math doesn't work," Rhys pointed out.

"Yes, the time mapping isn't constant," Aldrich allowed. "DTI requested we speed up the part where your world gets over what happened here. They'd like to come home, once your world gets back on its feet. They consider this world home now."

The three DTI nodded. Guy and Matthias caught themselves at it and stopped, with scowls.

"Two and a half years ago, your time," Aldrich continued, "we had a showdown with an evil archangel. In fact, I think it was he who decided the angels should abandon this world to its fate, thousands of years ago. Since then, he's sought a more permanent solution. To destroy all the worlds and start over. The good news is that we stopped him. The bad news is that he did an awful lot of damage here before we stopped him. And we tried to destroy him. But, he had accomplices we didn't know about. He managed to escape, by creating a new fourth world. _That_ one." Aldrich pointed to the new purple moon, rapidly being overtaken by one nasty bank of thunderheads, purpled and grumbling and flashing a bit of lightning inside.

Rhys laughed. "Good story. Not as good as your magic tricks. But good story, nonetheless. Ah – Guy, your goons are calling."

Guy's guards were indeed approaching. "Please don't call them goons, honey," he murmured, and rose to greet his security squad.

"Party's over. Come along, Major," the captain announced.

"Come along _where?_" asked Guy.

"Protocol says night before launch, you sleep in medical." The guard noticed Matthias sitting there and gave him a pointed stare.

"Right. Then I suppose I should be in medical, too," Matthias said, rising. "Observing him."

"You're launching _tomorrow?_" asked Shouma in alarm.

"No, no," said Guy. "It's just a systems test tomorrow. I can sleep in my _own_ bed."

"Commandant says not," countered the guard. "Full dress rehearsal. Hey, at least he let you eat dinner first, Major."

"We really need to talk, Guy," Shouma urged him.

"_All_ unauthorized personnel off base. As of _now,_" the guard elaborated.

"It'll have to be after the systems test, Shouma," said Guy. "I think these guys just might be serious."

"Enforced clean living. At least you didn't get an old hag," Rhys pointed out. "He's been clean and chaste, Doctor, scout's honor. No need to _insert_ anything to check."

Guy chuckled. Matthias looked puzzled, and Guy shook his head. _You don't want to know._

"Promise me, Guy," Shouma pleaded. "After the systems test. Look, I know... my son... blurted it out all mangled up and unbelievable. But it's _really_ important. Promise me?"

_Well, you've certainly got my attention and my curiosity, Shouma. I'll give you that much._ "Alright. Promise." Then Guy and Matthias trooped off one way, while a detachment of guards marched Shouma and Aldrich back to the gates. They reached the _Happy Daze_ sign just as the thunderhead let loose and pelted them with rain and hail.

-oOo-

"Mother!" Friedrich von Bielenfeld said in surprise. Tariel, the little angel who escaped Shinou, and freed all the great archangels, appeared. Tariel hopped up on a tall stool across from him. They sat at his wet bench, in his solitary laboratories at Trond Hall, high in the winter mountains of Trondheim, near midnight.

"Friedrich," Tariel greeted his/her son. The seeming blond boy let his bare feet dangle, kicking them slightly below his plain sleeveless tan sheath.

"It's good to see you, Mother. You come so seldom."

"I don't like heights. Dogwood doesn't belong here. Sassafras either. Nor magnolia."

Friedrich hated heights, too. Others assumed that meant what they meant by it – afraid of looking down where one might fall. But even on the ground up here, he was too high. Sassafras didn't grow here on the mountains. The air was too thin. The months when deciduous sap ran were too brief. But this secret he kept. Over his eight centuries, many secrets had ripened and passed into revelation. But never this one. Only Tariel the dogwood, and Garena the magnolia, remained who knew Friedrich as he was born, as sassafras.

He sighed. "I visit down below when I can. So – what brings you here in dead of night, in dead of winter?"

Tariel was stubborn. "You not have to marry with mountain queen anymore. Troll Mother dead. You are happy in sunshine, where the sassafras grow."

It was a sore point. After two and a half centuries, the _'mountain queen'_ had finally talked Friedrich into a second child besides their son Aldrich, just days before Troll Mother died. But done was done, and he would not undo his newborn daughter Frieya now. "I chose this life, Mother. I'm content with my lot. I have good work to do."

Tariel traced a small finger along pigtail copper piping. The pipe whistled a little steam as it distilled, a beaker bubbling merrily over fire at the end of the wet bench, dripping the resulting fraction into another beaker at the other end. "Yes, you are happy. I remember you as a child, play with this."

Friedrich frowned. "In Bielenfeld. You watched me?"

"Always watch," Tariel replied, and dropped his finger from the hot pipe. "Not always understand. But watch, and try. I... love you." Tariel sounded so sad when he said that. He didn't say it often. Maybe half a dozen times in Friedrich's eight centuries.

"What troubles you, Mother?" Friedrich asked softly.

"I... cannot decide. You know Quercus says I must rise. Or fall. It is hard, Friedrich. The immortal... do not like change. It is not natural, to us, to become, to change."

"Are you afraid to fall?" Friedrich asked. "You are always welcome, with me, with Aldrich, with any of your mortal descendants, if you fall. If you rise... Well. You're still welcome, always. Though you are already so high, I can hardly reach. But I shall watch. And try. For I love you."

Tariel gave a rare small chuckle and smile. Then turned sad again. "I should not love you, Friedrich. Not like this. I do not love you by the One Law."

The One Law, as Friedrich well knew, was survival of the fittest. Loving your children by the One Law amounted to the sentiment by which a mighty maple tossed helicopter seeds to spin off to their destiny. No ties. No connection. "The One Law is not love, Mother. It's also not the only law. Good law for trees. Bad law for beings that make choices, beings that can harm others."

"But is angel law."

"That, I have never understood," Friedrich admitted. "Maybe I'm not willing to understand."

"Maybe. Maybe I am inspired to rise, by love. But by love, I should instead fall. I am confused."

"Well, ponder it a few more epochs," Friedrich quipped. "What's the rush, after all, in eternity?"

Tariel's huge green eyes met his and held them. "I told you it was time, once."

"And yet here we are, still." But Friedrich's eyes began to itch, as when tears are coming on.

"Maybe not much longer," said Tariel. His eyes shone, and tears began to fall. "Maybe."

The little wood nymph hopped off his stool. He hugged Friedrich briefly. He disappeared.

When he finished crying, Friedrich called on his brother Garena and demanded to know what was happening. But Garena didn't know either.

-oOo-

_AN: Please review! _


	6. Systems Test

**Kyou Kara Maou – Space Oddity**

Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind – an astronaut linked to Wolfram.

_Author's Note: _This chapter dedicated to **DemiDaemon, methos21, Lokemele, **and** JoanaW** for _reviewing!_

Sorry for another hiatus... Time to release writer's block on my life again...

**Chapter 6 – Systems Test**

_watching in a trance  
the crew is certain  
nothing left to chance  
all is working_

_trying to relax  
up in the capsule  
"send me up a drink"  
jokes Major Tom  
the count goes on  
4 3 2 1..._

"So what do you think, Matthias?" Major Guy Tom asked the doctor. The guards had left them settled into the medical trailer for the night. Matthias had already run Guy through the medical checks prescribed by the pre-flight protocol. The Germans were supposed to have sent a ten person medical team. Instead, they'd sent one unpaid volunteer – Matthias – and an astonishing array of shiny equipment and meds.

In reply, Dr. Matthias Bielefeld pulled open a file drawer, and brought out a bottle of Glenfiddich and a single heavy glass tumbler. "I think... you may have another shot of B-12 if you'd like." For himself, he downed a shot of the scotch. He poured another larger dose, and put the bottle away.

Guy scowled at the injustice of this, and took a sip of his currant-flavored metabolic salts drink – a German Gatorade knock-off. "About Shouma's story. And this Aldrich character." He fidgeted with the O2 saturation meter, a plastic clothespin on a cord clamped to his finger. The cord dangled to a digital meter, which read a rock-steady blue "100" percent, proclaiming his lungs _'nominal'_. "Crazy. Right?"

Matthias sat back on the leather sofa to nurse his double. "I've known Shibuya Shouma for years," he said slowly. "I last saw him in Singapore, two months _Before,_ on my way to Afghanistan. We played golf." He snorted in reminiscense, but didn't share the joke. "He was in Tokyo. The day DTI was to depart for ... the other world. His son Yuuri's world."

Guy shrugged. "He might have been visiting Shouri."

"No. After joining the ESA, I was able to retrieve my email from – that day. Including increasingly frantic blast emails from Shouri. The last was video mail, from Shouma in his dining room in Tokyo." Matthias leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Not in relaxation – his eyes scanned back and forth behind the lids, reviewing his visual memory. "Two men were behind him. One Japanese, mid-twenties, but in Japanese high school naval uniform. The other wore a poet blouse with cravat, and bright blue pants with gold side-piping. Maybe Russian features. Blond and blue hair. Lavender eye shadow, expensive earrings, and an extraordinary cravat pin. Very striking." Matthias opened his eyes and nodded his head slowly. "He looked like this Aldrich."

Guy continued as devil's advocate. "Later they left Tokyo and made their way to Europe. It's been several years, after all. Not easy. But you made it home from Kabul, after all."

Matthias shot him a guarded glance. "There are some problems with that theory. One. That same mystery man in the poet blouse also appears in pictures of the Chunnel incident, with the mystery giants. You've seen these photos, of course?"

Guy nodded. Everyone had seen those photos. Three giants – over seven feet tall, with massive chests and shoulders, and hair dyed assorted bizarre colors – were credited with somehow miraculously sealing the Chunnel after the explosion. There were three normal-sized men with them. One Asian, in some kind of black uniform, credited with parting the waters like Moses. Another with steel-grey long ponytail, in some kind of dark green dress uniform. And one with blond and blue hair in a poet blouse over bright blue pants. Witnesses claimed he healed injuries up to severed arteries and shattered pelvic bones, with a laying-on of hands and a flash of light. Not that any of that was caught in a photo, of course. Just still pictures, accompanied by the wildest urban legends.

Guy asked, "Did you recognize them before tonight? That a couple of the Chunnel mystery men looked like the men in that last vid from Shouma? On the opposite side of the world, within a few hours?"

"Yes," admitted Matthias. "Second problem. In Singapore, playing golf, I complained to Shouma about my first white hair. He showed me his – grey, not white. Do you think you look two years older than you did _Before_, Major?"

"I look ten years older_._ My husband more like twenty."

"Me, too. Half my hair is white now. But Shouma's hair hasn't changed. His shirt and pants were clean and new. He could have walked off that golf course in Singapore yesterday. Neither of them... _felt _right. They haven't been through what we've been through. All of us. But not them."

Guy toyed with clamping the O2 sat meter to assorted other bits of his anatomy. The digital display stuck resolutely at 100. "It was the same with Shouri," he eventually stated, and clicked off the meter.

"Twenty-two thirty hours," said Matthias. "Bed. Saith the protocol."

"We'll talk to them again after the systems test," said Guy.

Matthias started to say something, but seemed to think better of it. "Right. Good night."

- _What, Chichiue? –_ Wolfram thought. – _I mean, Matthias. Ask him, Guy, ask him! What isn't Matthias saying? – _ But Guy went on through to brush his teeth before bed.

-oOo-

Shouma and Aldrich regrouped with Yuuri and Shouri in Wolfram's room, as the systems test droned on toward its end. Wolfram had little trouble remaining present in both universes, while Guy flicked switches and mechanically worked his way through seemingly endless checklists.

"Please get to the _point,_ this time," Wolfram begged. "There's no telling how much time we have left."

Shouma sighed. "Wolfram, talking faster doesn't make you more credible. Kind of the opposite."

Aldrich nodded. "Just look for when we can reach as many of them as possible. Shouma seemed to be getting somewhere with Matthias, and I think Rhys is key to persuading Guy. Guy cares a lot more about his husband's opinion than anything we can say. As an abandoned DTI, Matthias is in the same boat with Guy, and has some influence too. I'd like to speak with all three of them together again, if possible."

Wolfram sighed and stretched in his bed, luxuriating in a huge yawn. "Well, I don't know wh –" And he stopped, suddenly and utterly.

"Wolfram?" Yuuri said, inexplicably chilled. "What's happening?"

-oOo-

Wolfram couldn't imagine what hooked him into Guy's consciousness this time. The astronaut was done with his last inventory – a pill count of the spacecraft's medical supplies. He suspected Rhys of making off with some of the _'opiates'_, whatever they were. Guy didn't seem angry about it. But it occupied his thoughts where he sat, all suited up and strapped in, going nowhere and waiting for the systems test to be declared over.

"Matthias, send me up a drink, would you?" he joked over his radio.

Matthias snorted over the speakers. "That's a negative. Not even a sip of water at this point in the launch – you don't want to take that many G's on a full bladder. Still hungover?"

"No, I'm good. Just bored. What's Rhys up to?"

"Family to observation deck," Matthias reported. "He's not allowed in control for takeoff, you know that."

"Final check," someone else said. Wolfram didn't know what exactly they were talking about, but he got the gist – a roll call droned on, much like before a battle, commanders and sergeants confirmed that their units were briefed and ready. Though calmer, since it was just a full dress rehearsal. Eventually Guy and Matthias were queried.

"Medical, astronaut, all systems nominal. Good to go," reported Matthias.

"Astronaut, flight deck, good to go," Guy reported on cue.

"All systems go. Initiate engines," the disembodied inventoryist said next. Wolfram was caught by surprise at Guy's reaction.

"Control, repeat that."

"Good to go, initiate engines, Major. This is not a test. We are a go."

"We have a launch window?" Guy's heart pounded, and his hands grew clammy with sweat. His mind stuck on the fact that he hadn't kissed Rhys good-bye, just returned a slap on the shoulder and quipped about lunch after the test.

"Affirmative, Major. We have launch window. Initiate engines."

- _Guy, what's going on? - _Wolfram inquired urgently. – _What's happening? –_

_Damn good question,_ thought Guy. He flicked his circuit to a private line to Medical in the control room. "Matthias, what the _hell?_"

"I am not Control Command, Major. Why are you asking me?" replied Matthias.

Guy's heart thumped, seemed to bang in his ears. "What if they were right, Matthias? The demons."

_- They were! – _Wolfram cried. – _You must not go to that moon! Is __**that **__what's happening? __**NOW? NO!**_** – **

There was a long pause. "I will not discuss that on a recorded line, Major. Are you good to go?"

- _Chichiue, NO! Can't you stop this? – _But Wolfram had no voice, save Guy's.

Guy scrunched his eyes shut, swallowed, and flicked the switch to initiate engines. A vibration and roar the like of which Wolfram had never imagined possible, bloomed beneath their seat, like he was sitting on a bomb exploding in slow motion. "Just took me by surprise, Doctor. Astronaut good to go." As though he watched someone else stretch forth his hand, Guy switched back to the all-control channel. "Engines initiated."

"Countdown begins."

- _Yuuri! HELP! – _Wolfram screamed. – _Get me out of here! – _But there was no reply. He'd always felt before that _somehow_ he was connected to Yuuri. That _somehow_, in some sense, Yuuri heard when he was in trouble. But that feeling was gone. A disembodied, lost soul, Wolfram yelled without voice at a yawning emptiness, a blank wall. And the countdown dragged on. The impossible roar just kept getting louder, the vibrations building until the room felt like a live beast, struggling mightily to escape its tethers.

"How are you doing, Major?" Matthias inquired, after a brief eternity of countdown.

Guy clicked back to his private line to Medical. "Nerves worse than I expected," Guy admitted.

"Just caught you by surprise. Don't let the funk get you," Matthias encouraged. "If it makes you feel better, I felt you should have been in the need-to-know loop. Give you a chance to prepare yourself psychologically. I was overruled. But I have all your vitals on monitor. You _are_ good to go, Major," Matthias asserted.

_Well, he would say that, true or not,_ Guy reflected. _Matthias could still stop this... – _

– _Then ASK HIM TO! –_ Wolfram begged. – _Please, by Shinou and a thousand hells, Guy, STOP THIS! – _

_Shinou? And a thousand hells?_ Guy grimaced in annoyance. "Do I get to talk to Rhys?" he blurted to Matthias, through his throat mike.

"That's a negative. I believe Dr. Thomas has not been informed this is a real launch. I will convey any message, of course."

The roaring maelstrom of the engines beneath him, and the yammering alien terror within, weren't conducive to composing brilliantly poetic last words. If they should be his last words. _God._ He'd thought of something to say once, what was it? "Tell him to remember the cottage in Wales. Whatever happens, I always dwell with him there. I love him." And in the memory, he calmed down a bit. Remembering their happiness together, that autumn Rhys took a sabbatical, and they were alone together, in a beautiful peaceful cottage, _Before._

"I'll tell him," Matthias promised. "God be with you, Major."

"TEN, NINE, ..."

"May God's love be with you, Major Tom," control command echoed, over the countdown.

"...THREE, TWO, ONE, _**LIFTOFF!"**_

And Wolfram and Guy felt like an elephant sat on their chest, as the spaceship leapt up for the sky.

-oOo-

Back in Wolfram's bedroom, Garena suddenly appeared, and placed a glowing stone on Wolfram's chest, where he lay there, utterly still. A sweet pure energy bubble grew to envelope Wolfram's still body.

"_What?"_ Yuuri and the others demanded.

Garena stood gazing at Wolfram, subdued and perhaps a bit shocky. "The stone will keep his body in stasis," he said woodenly. "If – Until his soul is reconnected."

Yuuri grabbed his arm, and demanded, "Garena, what's _happened?_"

"The angels have closed the veils between the worlds. Whatever happens next, on Earth, it cannot take these wells with it," Garena said, still staring at Wolfram.

Maou mode took over Yuuri. His hair rose and snaked, blue power coiled about him. And he _reached –_

And still, even with the fullness of Maou power upon him, Yuuri could reach _nothing_ where Earth used to be. "Oh, messenger of angels, _YOU WILL_ reopen the veils, that I may retrieve my faithful husband!"

"Even your power cannot do that," Garena replied woodenly, unimpressed by the blue sparks. "Nor even combined with Cecilie and Aldrich and Bertram. Then how should I? No, Yuuri-heika. I can only keep his body alive. His soul travels with the Maou of Earth, to Soushu's evil moon. The systems test was a feint. They launched." Garena finally lifted his eyes to meet Yuuri's. "Wolfram is only one man, among billions. The die is cast. And there is nothing we can do about it."

The despair in Garena's eyes convinced Yuuri as his words could not.

-oOo-

_...This is Ground Control  
to Major Tom  
You've really made the grade  
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear..._

-oOo-

_AN: Sorry, hard to make it suspenseful when you probably knew what was coming... Next chapter will be more of a suprise. ;)  
_

_Please review! _


	7. Sold Out

**Kyou Kara Maou – Space Oddity**

Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind – an astronaut linked to Wolfram.

_Author's Note: _This chapter dedicated to **DemiDaemon** and **JoanaW **for _reviewing!_

**Chapter 7 – Sold Out**

_Earth below us  
drifting falling  
floating weightless  
calling calling home..._

_second stage is cut_  
_we're now in orbit_  
_stabilizers up_  
_running perfect_  
_starting to collect_  
_requested data_  
_what will it affect_  
_when all is done_  
_thinks Major Tom_

After another timeless eternity, Guy flicked a switch, a great rumbling ensued, and one of the elephants got off his chest. He – and Wolfram within him – were still pressed to the space capsule's seat with well over twice their normal weight. The roaring engines below them seemed closer, if anything. After enduring another stretch of eternity, Guy flicked another switch. _Clunk._ And his weight evaporated.

_All_ of his weight. To his surprise and chagrine, Major Guy Tom, astronaut, swallowed uncomfortably. He cleared his thoat, aggressively. He unbuckled his seat belt and started to drift.

And he grabbed the barf bag just in time. And deployed it correctly, despite never having needed one before in his life. "Goddamnit, I'm a _test pilot!"_ he muttered. He firmly ordered his quailing stomach to settle, be still, calm itself, _"Behave, _dammit!" And dry-heaved again into the bag. There wasn't much in his stomach to heave.

"Major, your mike is still keyed to private line to Medical," Matthias replied, smile audible in his voice. "You need liquids. Try drinking the gelatine."

Guy obediently opened and sucked on a _Rotdorn_-flavored German foil packet, whatever _Rotdorn_ was. Tasting the stuff left him none the wiser on that, but the sugary goop did him some good. At last he was able to focus on the view. Gentle taps on the attitude gyros allowed the window to swing, first to the white-swathed blue-green-brown beauty of a crescent Earth, with near-absolute darkness past the terminator of night, in the Middle East. A perfect and poignant jewel – Guy was entranced by Earth as every astronaut had been. But after a few minutes, curiosity led him to tap the gyros again, to swing the viewscreen lazily across the infinitely deep velvet night of unblinking bright stars, and on to the moons, sailing together, nearly full, before him. Though closer, these actually looked a bit smaller than they had from Earth, without atmosphere effects, and in the vastness of their black setting.

Wolfram was spellbound and shocked into silence. _We're hanging in the middle of nothing,_ he realized, in awe. _Those are entire worlds... entire suns... and we're on none of them._ His motion sickness was gone, despite the slow tumble of the spaceship. It was only anticipation that made Wolfram ill. A pressing situation left him poised, clear, and ready.

Yarmouth C&C saw whatever Guy and Wolfram did. Eventually Matthias said dryly, "When you're done sight-seeing, Major, control command requests you switch your mike back to general audience, and say a few words before you get to work. They'd like sensors out before bed. I'd advise sleep in three hours, if you can."

Guy blushed. "Right," he said, and switched to the open channel. His face felt frozen in a smile of fierce joy as he read the speech prepared for him, to be recorded and re-broadcast across the world, or as much of it as they could reach. He'd memorized the speech. It seemed rather trite at the time, with puffed-up rhetoric about returning to the stars despite mankind's great setbacks. But now he felt the words full and true, grateful at the vastness of the privilege of being here, and now. He panned the cameras over the viewscreens as his eyes welled with unfalling tears.

And he and Wolfram felt as one in humble awe, as they extended the sensors, turned on the experimental rigs, and began transmitting data back to Earth, and Rhys. It took only a few minutes of this to send Rhys into some scientific ecstasy about gravimetric anomalies.

- _What does that mean? – _asked Wolfram.

And for once, in their attunement, Guy simply answered. _The purple moon is bigger than we thought._

- _Of course, it's a whole world – _replied Wolfram.

This gave Guy pause only for a moment. There were many more switches to switch and calibrations to calibrate, before he could take a well-earned and badly needed sleep. But as he worked, and after he fell asleep, Wolfram told Guy all he knew about the purple moon before them, and about the wells of the worlds, and angels and demons, and Wolfram's own life story, his hopes and dreams, loves and challenges, and Yuuri, and his children, so impossibly far away.

_I talk. Guy hears me. And I see, even when Guy's eyes are closed. I still exist. I still exist..._

-oOo-

_And I'm floating  
in a most peculiar way  
And the stars look very different today_

_For here_  
_Am I sitting in a tin can_  
_Far above the world_  
_Planet Earth is blue_  
_And there's nothing I can do_

-oOo-

"Bielefeld is the biologist," Rhys accused, causing Dr. Matthias Bielefeld to finally look up from his work, toward the late morning ruckus the next day in Yarmouth control and command.

"I'm a doctor, not a biologist," Matthias objected. But a well-armed guard proceeded to follow Rhys Thomas' accusing finger, bearing down on Matthias, intently carrying a... _vegetable._ An orange zebra-striped eggplant, in fact. The guard was named Ben.

"We're the only two scientists _here,_" Rhys replied from his instrument station. This looked much like Matthias' own station, save the two could hardly make heads or tails of each other's devices. "Me physical science. You biological science. You've studied genetics, haven't you? Well, then."

The solemn guard Ben delivered the _vegetable of great import_ unto Matthias' hands. "Yes? So?" the doctor asked this looming ox-like being. "It's an eggplant. Dr. Thomas and I ate ones just like it the night before last. I never studied _plant_ genetics," he quibbled in Rhys' direction, "and I'm not a _scientist._"

Rhys shrugged.

Matthias sighed in defeat. He asked Ben, "So why do you bring me an eggplant?"

"I was guarding Major Tom when we bought those eggplants by the carousel pier," Ben began.

Matthias pursed his lips. "Good for you," he said coldly.

Ben gulped, and blurted his story as quickly as he could, of Aldrich selling seeds to the shabby woman. Matthias' aggrieved gaze lay on Rhys for a bit, then shifted speculatively toward the General in Control Command, when the guard finally managed to catch his interest. "So the, um, painted pumpkin seed grew overnight into an _apple tree_ sapling. The lady, I don't know why, she planted an eggplant seed and the pumpkin and a pepper right away once she got home from the pier."

"She planted eggplant and peppers. In July?" Matthias interrupted, frowning. "Not very bright," he mused. At Yarmouth's lattitude, not so different from Germany, one would start tomatoes, eggplant, and pepper seeds indoors about the end of April, and hope it was warm enough outside for transplant by end of May, for _harvest_ starting in July or August.

"Yeah, right?" Ben pressed on. "She said she just had a feeling. Saved most of the seeds for next year, but planted one each of the eggplant and pepper right away. And the man _said_ to plant the pumpkin – um, apple tree – right away, at the north end of her vegetable patch."

"Shouma, or Aldrich? Black hair, or blond?"

"Uh, blond with colors." Muscle-bound Ben stroked his own head with spread fingers to express _streaked hair_. Matthias' crinkling eyes gave Ben to suspect that the doctor was laughing at him. Ben cleared his throat and thrust fists down at his sides to assert masculinity. "Anyway, she _planted_ them. Almost two days ago. By morning, there was a sapling, like I said, and the eggplant and pepper were knee-height. By evening, the eggplant had big purple flowers," Ben's expressive hands escaped to indicate a generous purple blossom four inches in diameter. Matthias' dimple showed, and Ben schooled his hands again. "This morning, the pepper has flowers – um, they're small, and white – and she picked the first two eggplant. Like that one."

"Leftover eggplant. And the woman is insane," Matthias delivered his verdict.

"No, sir!" Ben stood erect, in offended dignity. "She lives right here in the caravan park, inside the security perimeter. She cooks for us. I was in her garden, helping out, just after we arrived for systems test. And I looked today. I swear, _those_ eggplant are growing. And they weren't, three days ago. And the apple tree is around 650 centimeters tall now," Ben forgot his hand discipline, and reached slightly to indicate over seven feet, "and _blooming,_ and leafing out like spring." Fingers indicated blooms intermediate in size between pepper and eggplant.

"Are you romantically involved with this woman?" Matthias inquired.

Matthias had never met the sad-eyed drudge in question, but Ben's repelled reaction was clear enough. "No, sir! And the ground's not disturbed where those plants are now. And the _other_ plants in the garden have taken off like a rocket. There's cabbages this big," Ben mimed hugging a medicine ball. "It's like bigness spreads out from that little tree. You can see it in the cabbage row, big to small, like it wasn't last I was in there." His mimed medicine ball shrank to grapefruit size, with increased radius from the apple sapling. "Best cabbage I've ever tasted, too. She says it's a miracle. And _she's_ like – well, she's like a new person, all bright-eyed. Hopeful, like. Thinks she'll have peppers tomorrow, and apples by end of week."

Matthias gazed at the man a few more moments, but Ben appeared to be finished, and awaiting Matthias' scientific verdict. Matthias rolled the eggplant in his hands, and thumped it. It appeared to be ripe. And orange zebra-striped, with ordinary spiny green calyx. And if this man were to be believed, it was planted – from seed – less than two days ago. Which should have – well, for a more pedestrian eggplant, anyway – say purple, or white – should have taken approximately... Matthias keyed in a search on his console. Three and a half months, with good weather. Longer for ripe peppers. An apple tree... years, he presumed. He tapped the eggplant again in thought.

And Matthias was seized with a sudden overpowering urge to demand that the miracle garden and all its contents be torched immediately. To tell the guard these plants were dangerous radioactive mutants. They must be eradicated before their pollen risked contaminating local foodstocks.

For Dr. Matthias Bielefeld had sold his soul to the devil. His odyssey returning from Afghanistan just _After_ hadn't been quite the luck-kissed journey he'd described to Guy Tom. He'd been half-buried in earthquake rubble. Then ignorant and violent Taliban xenophobes gathered to stone him as he fled town. He had a concussion, sunstroke from days' exposure, and his many gashes festered. Fevered, thirsty, and starving, he found the remote Taliban villagers' hatred contagious. He'd killed four before he found the UN plane. Including a pregnant teen, whose AK47 and ammo he lusted after. And then he killed the pilot and crew of the UN plane.

But unlike most who sold their souls to the devil in despair that evil winter, Matthias never once gave up. He and Shouma knew each other so well because the pair were finalists for Bob's successor as DTI Maou in their generation. Bob had prospered, and their generation never supplied a Maou. But the choice had been made, just in case, and Shouma won by a narrow margin. Both men had the strength of spirit, social dexterity, and demon potential. Shibuya Shouma was simply better at finance. Which was more useful, then.

Matthias still didn't give up. He accepted his soul as sold, but he'd worked to buy it _back_ ever since he'd crawled out of that rotten plane in Crete, and fell to his knees to kiss the soil of Europe again. Hell held no terrors for him. He'd already been to hell and back. For over two years now he'd acted as a damned _tour guide,_ leading the PTSD-stricken hopeless of Germany back from hell. In his own estimation, he'd earned at least half of his soul back.

And he resisted the devil's order to make the magical plants burn. "Magic," Matthias pronounced his verdict. "These plants are the result of magic."

Rhys – who could not see the fires of hell bursting up around Matthias – rolled his eyes.

Matthias saw the flames and defied them. "_'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,'_" he quoted. "Aldrich was an alien, proved it with advanced technology – magic – and warned us. We must abort this mission. Or Major Tom will die. And worse – we didn't get to hear the rest. General!" Agony lanced through Matthias. The trick of human spontaneous combustion quickened within him. He reached toward the ESA commander –

And the minor angel Tariel, unseen by any, touched the doctor's brow in benediction, and claimed Matthias Bielefeld for his own. The fires of hell vanished. Two and a half years of self-perpetuated condemnation and self-horror fled from Matthias. He was filled with a grace and peace the like of which he'd never known.

Such was the algebra of transcendance, that every man and woman who'd crossed his path – including some really dislikeable Afghans – who had likewise sold out to the devil, but had even once hoped in vain it were not so – they too regained their souls in a moment of grace. It was one of the most spiritually incandescent moments ever to touch the ravaged planet Earth. And incidentally – Guy being off-planet – Matthias Bielefeld became Maou of Earth. Not that it mattered terribly much to the half dozen or so remaining DTI demons, isolated in Africa, Fiji, and South America.

On the mundane plane, unfortunately, this meant that Matthias passed out and fell to the floor. No one else in C&C had sold their souls to the devil. And they weren't spiritually attuned just then. Hulking Ben nudged the good doctor with a tentative toe, then knelt down to help.

Rhys' mouth hung open a moment, then he frowned, and turned to the General. "Sir... maybe..."

"Gibberish, Dr. Thomas," the General proclaimed. He waved away Rhys' barely-formed attempt to object, and placed a compassionate hand on his shoulder. "It's not up to you, Rhys. There was always the possibility this was a one-way trip for Guy. You know that. And it'll be by my call, not yours."

"But evidence of advanced alien technology - !"

"Means we need to know more, hm? And Major Tom was willing to give his life for that. We will not abort."

Unnoticed, Tariel blessed Rhys Thomas and Ben, the General – the poor man's name was Witherbotham, so his staff avoided using it, out of respect – and all the others present in C&C. She / he reviewed the future, to see if Matthias' supreme act of self-salvation had changed the cold equations. And found rather the opposite. Soushu was retaliating. And the time was now.

"Dr. Bielefeld? I'm _really_ going insane," Guy's voice whispered urgently from the speaker at Matthias' station. "There's – there's – _two_ of me! Another me in the capsule. Oh, _God._ Is there an anti-psychotic med here? Matthias? God help me!"

-oOo-

_Earth below us  
drifting falling  
floating weightless  
calling calling home..._

-oOo-

_AN: Please review! _

_Forgot to mention last time, in case you didn't notice (and care) – I added a new 2-chapter romance, _Homecoming_, to _Shining Moments,_ my collection of OC side stories. _Homecoming_ stars General Teodor von Trondheim. He fights to regain his self-respect and career after his troll-induced treason, set between _The Ghosts of Trondheim _and_ The Disaster Up North._ (So _Homecoming_ crosses time periods with _Space Oddity_, though the stories are unrelated.)_


	8. Angel Rising

**Kyou Kara Maou – Space Oddity**

Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind – an astronaut linked to Wolfram. This chapter: wherein it hits the fan.

_Author's Note: _This chapter dedicated to** JoanaW **and **DemiDaemon** for reviewing!

Sorry for the delay. Efforts to release my writer's block on life worked! I've been busy... So I should stop dawdling and wrap this one up. It's a simple story, really. Compared to like, _Well of the Five Kings._ On another note, I am bemused by just how _many_ hits part 2 – but not part 1 – of _Shining Moments | Homecoming_ is getting. Extra brownie points for anyone who explains that one to me. Perhaps I should write more hetero stories, eh?

_Update, 2012-04-07: mostly fixed typos, couple wordings._

**Chapter 8 –Angel Rising**

_Though I'm past  
one hundred thousand miles  
I'm feeling very still  
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go  
Tell [Rhys] I love [him] very much  
[__H__e] knows_

Ground Control to Major Tom  
Your circuit's dead,  
there's something wrong  
Can you hear me, Major Tom?  
Can you hear me, Major Tom?  
Can you hear me, Major Tom?  
Can you...

-oOo-

Rhys Thomas, PhD, lunged for the medical station microphone in Yarmouth C&C. "_**Guy?**_It's Rhys!" He put his hand over the mike – much as you'd put your hand over the small mouthpiece of a phone - except that it doesn't work with a large mike – and barked at the hulking guard kneeling by the unconscious doctor at Rhys' feet. "Ben – Christ's sakes, man, wake the doctor!" And back to the mike – "Guy? Are you all right?"

_Hiss_, replied the comm system malevolently.

"_**Dr. Thomas!**_" roared General Witherbotham, "Switch comms to all stations!" For the astronaut Guy Tom, hurtling toward the moons and fearing for his sanity, had called home on his private line to medical again.

"_**Dr. Thomas!**_" cried one of his minions, at the same time. "You've got to see this! The moon – the purple has – it's – _growing."_

"What? _**What?**_" And to the microphone, _"__**Guy! Answer me!**__"_

Clearly sitting at number three in the distraught physicist's attention at the moment, the ill-named General Witherbotham – quite a virile man, cutting a fine figure in his mid-50's – yanked the microphone out of Rhys' fist, and shoved him toward his physicist-minion. Carrying through the same motion, he grabbed the armed guard Ben and hoisted him after Rhys, ordering him to, "Keep him there!" He motioned another slack-jawed member of the team over, to, "Wake the doctor!" He punched override switches. Then bellowed into the microphone, "Major Tom! C&C here. Report!"

_Hiss,_ replied the comm system malevolently. Now in surround-sound from every station in C&C.

"Physics!" barked General Witherbotham. "Report, Dr. Thomas!"

"_**God**_ knows," replied Rhys, with feeling.

"Dr. Thomas..." the General crooned, with a distinct warning edge. The other minion looked up from the General's feet for permission to dowse Dr. Bielefeld with a glass of water to the face. Witherbotham nodded and used his body to shield the medical station equipment from the splash. Then he thoughtfully drifted back to his station in the middle of Yarmouth C&C.

"The –" The emotionally wrecked physicist Rhys Thomas continued to jab at touchscreens, fidget the wigglescopes, and tear at his hair, while processing the back-burner answer-the-boss-man problem as an afterthought. Which made him sound like he was talking to himself. "It's, the moon's, not _purple._ The purple is... something else, _what, godammit? _It's – _God_, it's growing fast. It's... _Jesus._" He put a satellite view up on the largest screen of C&C. "It's not a purple moon. It's... _something..._ inside a purple... _something..._ How in hell is it growing so fast?"

And with that, Rhys stood transfixed, as they all did. As the purpleness grew, they watched it cross the face of the familiar white moon on the viewscreen. And both were purple.

"Doctor..." prompted General Witherbotham gently, "is the... _purple field_... getting weaker? As its radius increases?"

"No, sir," Rhys breathed. He tapped a screen in slow motion at his station. "Not attenuating at all."

"Time to Major Tom's position?" General Witherbotham's tone could have been discussing the weather.

"Accelerating," Rhys replied, trancelike. "Twenty minutes? Maybe less."

"Time to Earth radius?" Witherbotham inquired gently.

"Accelerating non-linearly," Rhys responded. He tapped a few more instruments, then dropped his hand in defeat. "Unknown."

"And we don't know what it is?"

"No. We don't," said Rhys.

"Keep on it, Dr. Thomas," Witherbotham encouraged. Then he barked out, "Satellite ops! Security override ten alpha beta four delta niner niner zed. Get me the closest possible view on our spaceship."

Satellite Ops boggled. "You mean, break into US, Russian, and Chinese spy satellites? Sir. Sir, they'll know who did it!"

"Affirmative, Captain. Now, please." Witherbotham dialed a very special sat phone to London. "Witherbotham. Sending feed. Activating dual authority. Stow the jewels." He hung up, and nodded to the other general in C&C, who wore NATO instead of ESA badges. This seeming observer nodded back, took out his own sat phone, and became very busy on it, and on his instrument station, which had previously seemed only an ornamental courtesy. Farmers might toil in East Anglia with horsepower and the sweat of their brows, yet the vestiges of NATO's techno-might still scrambled in reply to his dancing fingers.

"Comms!" barked Witherbotham. "I want a broadcast loop to Major Tom. Ready? Mark. Major Guy Tom, this is Yarmouth C&C on recorded loop. Abort mission. I repeat: mission abort. Situation critical. Guy, come on home, son, and call if you can. End mark. Comms – keep it playing, and patch through anything you hear back immediately, on all stations."

Rhys stared at the NATO general. "They'll blow him out of the sky."

As though to underscore his words, Sat Ops threw up a closeup of Guy's spacecraft on one of the big screens, subtitled in Cyrillic characters. It wasn't a _close_ closeup – the vessel took up perhaps an eighth of the screen, in great clarity. But the satellites they had official access to would have shown it as only a few pixels on that screen. Rhys tried to blink back tears, but two slid down his cheeks.

Witherbotham walked over and held Rhys' shoulder, compelling Rhys' eyes to meet his own. "Find us another option, Doctor. We need answers."

-oOo-

_Can you hear me, Major Tom?  
Can you..._

Here am I floating

_in__ my tin can  
Far above the Moon  
Planet Earth is blue  
And there's nothing I can do._

-oOo-

A few minutes before, Wolfram had lunged – in his physical body! _yes!_ – for the comms switch and turned it off. Pushed, Guy bounced lightly off a wall and grabbed something to anchor himself, as far from the horrifying apparition as the dimensions of the workroom allowed. His breath tore in hard gasps, staring wide-eyed at Wolfram.

Wolfram anchored himself with his legs and turned his hands out toward Guy, placating. "It's alright, Guy. It's just me, Wolfram. We've been talking all this time. You know that. It's just now I'm... not inside you anymore. I'm... me again." It occurred to him just what he'd been wearing when last he was physical – pink nightie over black g-string, of course – and he glanced down. He wore the same clothes as Guy himself, navy-striped polo shirt over navy chinos, with high sneakers. He nodded in relief, and continued, "I don't know why, Guy. But I'm no threat to you. I used to be a voice in your head. Now I take up more space. That's all."

Guy gulped. "Tell me again, who you are?"

And Wolfram gently repeated the highlights, as though soothing a skittery horse. He added no details, just repeating parts he _knew_ Guy had become consciously aware of before, reminding Guy of 'Conrad's brother', and the experience of seeing Wolfram's children. Wolfram was step-son to Aldrich, whom Guy had met, and married to Yuuri, Shouma's younger son.

"I'm not insane? You're a... '_demon__'_? Like me?"

"I'm exactly like you, from an alternate world – same soul, different incarnation. In Yuuri's world. Yuuri's _new_ world."

"DTI... really escaped? All of them?"

"Not all. We missed _you_, and Matthias. And… others. Some died in Switzerland. But twenty thousand." Wolfram smirked. "My Shibuya in-laws are charming, but can you imagine what it's like to have _twenty thousand_ in-laws visiting? All calling _my_ country _'semi-medieval'_ and _'barbaric'_, and not _one_ of them has any skills worth a damn, or the common sense of kittens! And the _venereal_ diseases." Wolfram scowled. "I've got the lot of them in sexual quarantine." _See that, Shouma-san? I can speak indirectly to soothe people, too!_

Despite Wolfram's odd choice of 'soothing' material, it worked – Guy calmed down. "Why are you here?"

Wolfram glanced at the moons rolling slowly past the viewscreen. "_You_ cannot go _there._ That's what we've been trying to tell you the past few days. Guy, please, listen. _Worlds_ are at stake here, including _your_ whole world. You are a _Maou_, Maou of Earth. _You_, with all your power, are exactly what _that_ wants! Please, on all you hold holy, turn this ship around and head back to Earth!"

"But I can't –" Guy stopped, frowning, staring at the view. Wolfram turned to see. He frowned as the growing purple touched the pure and silvery white of the real moon.

"Turn the ship," Wolfram said, voice husky and low. "Do it _now,_ Guy. Because _that_ is Soushu, reaching for us."

"Soushu?"

"Soushu is the angel who wanted to destroy all of our worlds, eradicate all the mortals and start over. _Soushu_ is why some demons – DTI – were sent to Earth, to safeguard one of the keys that bound him. Soushu wants to take your power to escape his final prison, and finish off Earth at last." Wolfram caught his eye. "On your world, Shouri thinks they called him Lucifer."

"Religion," scoffed Guy.

"Magic," countered Wolfram, and summoned a Beautiful Wolfram blossom of flame on his hand. "Mine, is fire and healing. You command the elementals of air, I believe," he murmured throatily.

"I can't tell _them_ I'm turning around the ship because of magic and religion!"

"No, Guy, what you _can't_ do is to allow _that_ to use _you, _to destroy your world, just because you were too _embarassed_ to stop it!" Wolfram glowed with his maryoku, and reached a hand to clasp Guy's, so that Guy could feel the passion and truth in Wolfram. "_Believe me."_

And there between the worlds, the two parts of the same soul met directly. And Guy couldn't _not_ believe, that Wolfram told him all the truth that _Wolfram_ believed.

"You could still be wrong," Guy whispered.

"Time is running out," Wolfram whispered back. "You are _Maou._ Look into that purple field, behold the _size_ and _power_ of it. And tell me you don't feel what it is."

"Pure evil," Guy murmured. "Or... antithetical to _us_, anyway."

The comm system squawked to life, and played General Witherbotham's abort message. "Well, that simplifies things," said Guy, and swam for the controls, to start the process of turning around.

He turned on the comms switch. "Yarmouth C&C, Major Tom responding. Abort mission, confirmed. Mission aborting. Yarmouth C&C, acknowledge?"

_Hiss,_ replied the comm system malevolently.

"Are we turning?" asked Wolfram. He wasn't sure how he'd tell if they were, but certainly nothing seemed to be happening, movement-wise.

Guy got busy with switches again. Eventually, he replied. "No. The thrusters failed to fire. We're still on our original heading. The ship isn't responding. Neither is Yarmouth C&C. Or... Rhys."

-oOo-

The little angel Tariel was still focused on Yarmouth C&C. She watched as they responded, and marvelled at their skill and self-control and techno-tools. If the universe was as they thought it was, they should triumph. It was sad, it was _wrong_, that they should so resolutely _know_, that which was so tragically false.

They'd come so far. She had seen, with the others, those few millenia ago, as they emerged from the hunter-gatherer life, the clever but fragile social animals. Became something more. Stretched to become like demons in their power, relying on the physical, faith in made-up gods, and each other. With all the angels, she'd foreseen their trajectory, the cruelties and insanities, until they grew able to destroy a _world__,_ and every soul that dwelt therein. Soushu, the Great One, had declared they must prevent it, destroy them. Withdrawing from Earth was a compromise – the power of the universe would no longer be accessible to the humans. Forbidden, and hidden.

Tariel found she didn't really make a decision now, after all. Instead, she _embodied_ her decision of back then. That leaving the humans _more stupid_ solved nothing. The challenge was to help them rise, grow up into demons, and eventually into angels, in oneness with the rest of this beautiful planet garden of Eden. She wasn't the only angel who felt this way. But she had stood _alone_ for thousands of years. Tariel had learned to judge for herself, by herself, and to act on her own.

Matthias, spluttering water, regained his wits. Tariel stopped time for everyone around them, and knelt before him. "Matthias Maou," she hailed him.

Eyes round, Matthias drunk in the frozen people about him. The purple haze enveloping both moons on one viewscreen, a plot of elliptical purple growth beside it. The tiny spacecraft, hanging silver before the encroaching purpleness. And back to Tariel again, a blond ten year old in a rough-woven unbleached linen shift. "Who are you?" he breathed. "_What_ are you?"

Tariel replied – but did not answer. "You save Guy and Wolfram from little ship," Tariel instructed. "_Reach_, and keep reaching. Other Maou, other worlds, help."

"Am I dead?" replied Matthias, the rest of this having flown over his head.

"You dead in Afghanistan, go to hell," Tariel observed. "Now _live_." He grabbed Matthias' hand, enormous green child eyes boring into his. "_Live,_ like never before. Power of universe flow through you in joy. No resist. And _reach._ For Yuuri. For Aldrich. For Shouma. For Guy. For Wolfram. _Do not stop._" The angel's eyes demanded obedience.

"Um, alright," said Matthias slowly. But he didn't understand a word of it.

Tariel vanished, and Yarmouth C&C resumed motion in controlled panic. Matthias assured the man trying to revive him that he'd be fine with just a few minutes to collect himself, and sent him back to his station in the chaos. The doctor clambered into a chair and did just that, tried to collect himself. _Reach._ _What the hell did that mean…?_

-oOo-

_We skipped the light fandango_

_turned cartwheels 'cross the floor_

_I was feeling kinda seasick_

_but the crowd called out for more_

_The room was humming harder_

_as the ceiling flew away_

_( - Procol Harem, Whiter Shade of Pale )_

-oOo-

_"Yuuri, get us out of here!"_ Wolfram breathed, staring at the rapidly growing purple menace through the window. He swallowed, and looked back at Guy. "Guy! You're a Maou!" Wolfram reached to grasp his alter-ego's shoulders, and inadvertantly somersaulted over him, easily catching himself an anchorage on the other wall. _"Gah!"_

He tried again. "You're _Maou_, Guy. If you can reach Yuuri, he can pull us home."

_"Huh?"_ replied Guy. Guy shook his head, to clear it of nonsense. "We need to get the thrusters on. How…"

"Guy, _please,"_ begged Wolfram. "There's no _time_ for physical. We _have_ to use magic! Remember how Yuuri sent Aldrich and Shouma and Shouri here? Well, he can damned well come pick us up! But I can't _reach_ him. Please, Guy. _Try!"_

"I'm sorry, Wolfram, I don't know what the hell you think I am. Like Bob's blowing wind tricks? I'm an astronaut. This is my ship. Either help me fix my ship, so we can head back to Earth, or get out of my way!"

Guy turned back to the control panel, only to find Tariel's belly, floating perpendicular to him, inches from his nose. _"Gah!"_ Guy echoed Wolfram, and flew back into the not-really-other man.

Wolfram wryly caught him, and anchored Guy loosely across the chest.

"Wolfram right," said Tariel, easily turning her / himself to align with Guy's present 'up', about 20 degrees clockwise off Wolfram's axis. "No time. Use magic."

Guy twisted his head to meet Wolfram's eye, mere inches from his own. That cabin was _small _and meant for _one_. With three, it was a wonder they didn't have their elbows and knees in each other's eye sockets. "Great. Now I'm seeing little leprechauns. One of _your _friends?" His arms crossed belligerantly. His face scowled in a haughty and petulant manner that Wolfram didn't recognize as his own. After all, he didn't scowl at _himself_ like that. _"Humph!"_

Wolfram grinned at him. "My great-grandmother the angel. _Tariel!_ You've come to save us!"

Guy commented, "I should check the oxygen mix. Maybe this is all hallucinations."

Tariel turned thoughtfully and twisted a knob on full, making air from a vent _hiss!_ violently into their faces. "Yes. Need more air," Tariel said. He / she turned back to Wolfram, whose bangs were whipping his face from the sudden air onslaught. "Take deep breath _in._"

"What?" said Wolfram. "Tariel, Soushu could reach us in minutes –"

"No. _This_ minute. Breathe _in!"_ Tariel commanded sharply. Guy and Wolfram found their diaphragms yanked down like rubberbands to suck air into every cubic millimeter of their lungs. "Wolfram – defensive shield," Tariel ordered.

_"Wha –" _

And the spaceship exploded outwards all around them.

Soushu had arrived.

-oOo-

The purple field expanded so fast, that at the last, it came completely without warning. Matthias and the guard Ben, in fact, were the only ones in C&C un-busy enough to see the purple verge collide with the tiny spaceship on the viewscreen. And see the ship explode outwards.

Ben touched Rhys' shoulder and pointed to the puff of debris on the screen. Rhys' knees buckled. _**"Guy – !"**_ he sobbed, reaching his arm out toward the screen.

General Witherbotham whirled, to see the screen. His eyes grew wide in shock and pain, then his mouth set into a grim line. He turned away. He met the eye of the NATO general, whose grim mouth matched his own.

Matthias saw Rhys reach. _Reach. _That was impossible. God-knew-how-many-thousand miles, most of them the cold hard vacuum of space, lay between him and Guy. Impossible.

But grace, redemption, after what he'd done… Matthias had come to believe another impossible thing today. He had escaped the hell of his own judgment of his own actions, won back his soul from the devil. _Grace._

_ Reach –_

-oOo-

Wolfram clamped Guy to his chest with his left arm. His right arm flew straight out instantly to cast a magic protective shield. _"All elements that dwell in flame, attend me, thy beauteous and fiery paladin! Let no magic counter to my will pass my __**shield!"**_And a bubble of pure white energy surrounded them. Traces of clean blue and yellow flame danced upon it, matching the halo of fire healer power that danced on Wolfram himself.

Guy was completely out of his element. The fact that they were in space – cold hard vacuum, without benefit of spaceship or pressure suits – could mean nothing but explosive decompression and instant death. No other possibility had the remotest prayer of reaching his mind. _I am so dead._

_"__**Help**__, _you_**idiot!"**_Wolfram hissed at him. "Gather the air back inside the shield bubble!"

"I – what?" gasped Guy. Literally gasped, for indeed the bubble of air was thin. He was getting light-headed.

_Irritated_ didn't begin to cover it, but Wolfram resolved to count to ten. By the time he got to _two_, however, he realized that Guy was not stupid, nor powerless. Merely completely untaught. Wolfram closed his eyes a moment and pictured himself in the nursery, with his own adopted-brother-son Bertram on one knee, and Gwendal's little son Grendel on the other. Explaining '_this is how we draw on the energy that continually re-manifests as the universe, draw it through us via our affinity, form it, and direct it outward' – _translated into toddler-terms, of course. If he could teach it to _them,_ surely he could teach it to Guy. _Our lives depend on it._

Wolfram hugged Guy closer, his own passionate fire maryoku touching Guy the length of his body, and willed him to _feel_,to _understand,_ at a completely physical level, even if he had to short-circuit his mind to encompass it. "Your affinity is _air,_" Wolfram breathed in his ear. "You _embody air, _youfeel the continual re-creation of all-that-is, you perceive your own self as part and partner of the universe, via the air that you _breathe – breathe, _Guy – in the air brushing your face." He blew his own bangs across Guy's face, though enough breath to do that was getting hard to manage.

Wolfram gasped a moment, then continued. "Others can only perceive the beauty, the unfolding, as though it were a done thing. But you and I are part of the unfolding, through our maryoku. I, am _fire,_" and he blazed up the flames a moment – though that drunk up the air faster. "You, are _air._ _Feel_ the life breath of the _air,_ Guy. Feel the unfolding, the power, the potentiality. Now breathe it _in!_ All that scattered air, hurtling away – draw it _back_ to us, breathe it _in!"_

Aided greatly by the astronaut's oxygen deprivation, Wolfram managed to hypnotize Guy with these – to Guy – insane statements. Light-headedness, powerful fire persuasion, desperation, all combined. Guy frowned slightly, and felt it. Felt the universe continually renewing itself _in air._ As though he were on a small boat in a swift current, he drifted a finger into the water to feel himself part of the flow of that unfolding universe. As his fingers might draw little wakes of their own against the water, he diverted some of that unimaginably vast flow, and breathed _in –_

"Thank Shinou, you _did_ it!" said Wolfram, and hugged the other tight, while they both drew great lungfuls of sweet air. As they finally felt they had their wind back, Wolfram let him go, except to hold onto Guy's hands, and they drifted apart a little bit. And finally looked outward.

They hadn't paid attention before, because, well, saving their own lives was a priority. But besides that, the show was unfolding beneath and behind where Wolfram had been clutching Guy before. They re-oriented to see the verge of the purple, like a ragged maw stretching far above and below and to the sides. There was no way to tell how far away it was, for their were no yardsticks in this impossible position.

But little Tariel 'stood' there, not fifty feet away from them, facing the maw, her back to Wolfram and Guy, little blond head bowed. Her / his hair wasn't much longer than Wolfram's, the same color and cowlicky-wavy texture, just brushing her slight shoulders. The rough-woven linen sheath reached mid-thigh, legs athletic but big puppy-footed beneath it, shoulder blades and slim wiry arms with big puppy-hands above it.

She waited.

Wolfram didn't call out to her / him. He was confident that Tariel would have helped them with the air-to-breathe thing, if she weren't busy. He felt that, somehow, the littlest angel was holding that huge maw of purple at bay.

Guy didn't try to speak to him / her, because the child was outside the air, and he knew physically that no sound could possibly reach him. Not that anything about the tableau was physically reasonable. Then he gave up on being able to _reason_ about any of this, and just followed Wolfram's lead.

Guy looked around some more, and paled. Wolfram followed his gaze, to see Earth below them.

All four of Earth. All tinted purple.

Wolfram squinched his eyes shut in dismay, and turned back to Tariel. Something was coalescing in the purple streamers of the maw that stretched so far above and below the little angel.

-oOo-

Cecilie entered Wolfram's bedroom quietly, carrying Bertram. "I felt –" she began, and then saw the white magic bubble encasing her baby, and the shock and stillness of the men within. "I see." She walked to the bed, touching Yuuri and Aldrich lightly on her way. She gazed at Wolfram and hugged Bertram tight.

"We're all here anyway," said Yuuri suddenly. "Let's try to reach him." He held out hands to Shouri and Aldrich, and nodded towards Cecilie and Garena. "Garena. Grandfather. Won't you join us."

"The great nymphs –" Garena began. Then he thought again. He didn't _care_ what the great nymphs thought, really. "Yes. Let's try."

And a force even greater than they'd amassed to push Soushu out of their world linked hands – Yuuri, Shouri, Aldrich, Cecilie, Shinou-as-Bertram, and Garena. A full half-dozen of Maou-level powers _reached -_

-oOo-

Matthias tried to _reach_ Guy Tom in every metaphysical sense he could think of. Specializing in performance medicine, of course he'd learned all sorts of yoga, meditation, biofeedback, positive thinking – all kinds of self-mastery modalities. At the moment, however, nothing was quieting his mind. _Explosive decompression_ – _he is dead, _just kept running through his mind, with the tick-tick of his expensive gold Rolex's second hand underscoring the fact that, by whatever chance tiny loophole Guy still had air, time was running out.

Screw it. Go back to the directions. What had Tariel told him to do? Reach and keep reaching, don't give up. '_Power of universe flow through you in joy. No resist_' – that fit in with most New Age teachings. Oh, yeah… not just Guy. Shouma. _Knock-knock, Shouma-san, are you there?_ Yuuri – was a cute kid a couple decades ago. Hadn't seen him since. Shouri – never really hit it off with Shouri. Aldrich – Matthias had felt strangely drawn to the particolored-hair man, strong deja-vu. Worth a try.

_Knock-knock, beautiful magic healer from an alien planet - Aldrich, are you there?_ Despite the fact he was _reaching_ mentally, Matthias unobstrusively extended his hand each time.

And it was gripped in return by a smiling alien. "_Thank you_ for reaching out to me, Matthias!" Aldrich said, and kissed him warmly on the lips. Matthias didn't usually run that way – a cosmopolitan and open-minded man, he'd of course _tried_ it in college, but _chos_e women instead. Yet to his wonderment, the kiss felt strangely right and familiar.

The other five new people ringing Matthias' chair weren't familiar at all. Including a small green-blond haired boy who gazed around with great interest, and wiggled to get down from his mother's arms. Or rather, Matthias assumed the voluptuous blonde was the child's mother. C&C security was dumb-founded, yet quick on the draw. At least four guns were pointed at them, that Matthias could see. The woman shifted the baby on her hip to point him _toward _the guns and hide behind him. Which Matthias considered a rotten Taliban-worthy trick. Another blond man, who looked more like Matthias than his own father had, stood behind Matthias' chair, finger touching his back.

The guard Ben spoke out first. "Hey – that's the alien with the eggplant. And the taller Japanese is Major Tom's crazy cousin from the Millenium Bridge."

"Ah!" said Aldrich. Oblivious to the guns, he strolled over to Matthias' desk and picked up the orange zebra-striped eggplant. "Yes, that's one of mine. So it grew alright for you? I'm glad." He tossed the eggplant up, caught it, and lay it back down on the desk.

"_'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'", _Matthias repeated, to remind the room of his scientific verdict in the case of the eggplant. "General Witherbotham, this was our alien visitor from the other night – Aldrich." The guns lowered fractionally in doubt.

Aldrich smiled cheerily. "Pleased to meet you, General Witherbotham."

Shouri braved a few steps toward Rhys and extended his hand. "I'm Guy's cousin Shibuya Shouma, and that's my younger brother Yuuri." Rhys took Shouri's hand in a daze. "_Now,_ Yuu-chan," Shouri said quietly. And they vanished.

"_Physics!_" thundered General Witherbotham, "_Report!"_

"Um, they took Dr. Thomas," Ben reported in his stead. "And Dr. Bielefeld."

-oOo-

"Ah, sorry about that," Yuuri apologized to Rhys and Matthias, scratching his hair sheepishly. "That room was a bit too intense… Anyway, we're in a tearing hurry. What's the situation with cousin Guy and Wolfram?"

Rhys' knees buckled, and he abruptly sat down on the empty windy field overlooking Yarmouth, for that was where they'd suddenly appeared. Matthias crouched down to put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. Aldrich plonked down cross-legged on Rhys' other side, summoned a cypress tree sculpted of fire in his hand for a moment, then lay his hand on Rhys' lower leg, to do considerably more than steady him.

"Consider it an apology for dragging you out of there without permission," Aldrich murmured. "I gather you've already had a rather bad day. We will put you back – both of you – wherever you'd like to go, in a few minutes." The rest of the alien team nodded agreement.

Rhys sat bolt upright, already protuberant eyes wide and staring at Aldrich. "What did you _do _to me?"

"Dhalerath and ilrephatsi – no, I'm sorry, the translator can't manage. Mm, your bones were sick _here._" Aldrich touched his shin, then his spine. "And the cancer _there_. I fixed those. And there was way too much pain-killer – toxic amounts. I'm sorry, there's no way to prevent withdrawal. But at least you're not in pain." He paused, then asked gently, "Where's Guy?"

"The spaceship exploded, maybe ten minutes ago," said Matthias.

"The… purple… grew," Rhys explained. "You were right, Aldrich. It wasn't a purple moon, it was a … well, some round planetoid, behind a purple field. The purple grew, unbelievably fast it grew. It reached and touched Guy's ship, and… the ship exploded. He's gone…"

"Is the purple still growing?" Yuuri asked in alarm.

"What?" asked Rhys. "Oh. No. It stopped. I hadn't realized that…" He looked horrified at himself for that.

"Your husband's ship had just blown up," Matthias soothed him, hand on his back. "You're in shock, Rhys." And judging from the tremula in his hand, already feeling the opiate withdrawal. "We _will_ get Rhys back soon, yes?" he pressed Aldrich.

Aldrich nodded assurance, dusted himself off, and rose.

"He's alive," Yuuri said. "I know it. I can feel it now."

"No," Rhys croaked. "_No! _ He's _dead!" _ And he broke down sobbing, head clutched to his knees.

"Let me take you back," said Garena, and vanished with Rhys before anyone could object.

"Good going, Yuu-chan," Shouri said. "Way to handle a man who just lost his _'wife'_."

Yuuri grumbled something under his breath, then cleared his throat. "Aha. Well, Dr. Bielefeld, would you like to also be returned to the… fishbowl there… or join powers with us to draw Guy Tom and my husband Wolfram back to safety?"

"I don't think we can, Yuuri," opined a man who Matthias hadn't seen at Yarmouth C&C. He'd have noticed. The man wore his straight blond hair long, over a nobleman's outfit complete with sword, that looked straight out of the Dark Ages. Looked and smelled authentically worn in the Dark Ages, too – not a cheap costume.

"Shinou," said Yuuri, in some surprise. "Er, why not?"

"They're enveloped in Soushu now. Weren't you trying to avoid just that – handing over a Maou to Soushu? He's already got one. If we reach in there, he'll have eight." Yuuri looked puzzled over the head count, as Garena reappeared. "Matthias is now Maou of Earth," Shinou clarified. "And Garena is close enough to a Maou. You _definitely_ don't want Soushu to gain control of Garena, at any rate."

"How do you know these things?" Yuuri demanded crossly.

Shinou grinned. "Four thousand years of practice, Papa. Don't envy me."

"Four thousand years talking to archangel Quercus would drive me loopy," Garena commented.

"_Yes,"_ Shinou agreed, with feeling.

"I have to believe we can save Wolfram," Cecilie murmured. "Somehow."

"What happens if this purple Soushu hits Earth?" Matthias asked. "I mean, I would love to save Guy Tom, yes. But I think he would be the first to tell us to save _Earth_ instead."

"As would Wolfram," murmured Aldrich.

Despite the urgency of the situation – Matthias still marked the time on his Rolex – discussions bogged down as to what they _could _do.

-oOo-

An angel coalesced out of the purple before Tariel. Relative to Tariel, he seemed as tall as a three story building, with Tariel somewhere around the second floor. His face was sharply featured, beautiful, cold, and terrible, with flowing dark kelp-green hair, form-fitting black clothes shot with silver decorations, matching enormous wings.

"I think _that's_ Soushu," Wolfram whispered to Guy.

"LEAVE, LITTLE ONE. THIS DOES NOT CONCERN YOU." The tone was actually fairly gentle, it just _boomed_ around them in a wall of sound.

"You may not take this world," replied Tariel. "Nor this Maou, nor demon lord. You must go, Soushu."

"A-HAHA-HAHA!" boomed around them. Purple lightning bolts frolicked in accompaniment to Soushu's mirth. White and orange and yellow fireworks cartwheeled through the purple haze.

Another dark angel coalesced behind Soushu to the right, not as large – maybe only two and a half stories tall, dressed to resemble a tall mountain pine. _Ponderosa._ And another to the left whom Wolfram didn't recognise. His garb suggested _grain _ to Soushu's _ocean_ and Ponderosa's _tree_, though. His wings were shining gold.

"YOU A FOOL, TARIEL, AND ALWAYS WERE," said Ponderosa. Unlike Soushu, her words held malice toward the little angel before her.

"FINAL WARNING, ANGEL OF THE DOGWOOD TREE," spoke the third. His tone was neutral – unlike Soushu and Ponderosa, he cared nothing what happened to Tariel. "YOU MEET YOUR END."

Tariel bowed her head in acknowledgement. "I meet my end."

She lifted her eyes again directly at Soushu. The little-nymph-who-could raised her strappy little arms and spread her fingers. Wolfram and Guy clutched each other as their little bubble of air _whooshed_ back – _way_ back – from the tableau. Tariel grew, and as she grew, discrete beams of light, like vast telephone poles, began to dash toward her, not from the dark angels, but from the planets behind them. No – not _all_ the planets. One of them in particular. At first, Wolfram and Guy thought she was under attack. But it seemed these bolts of power were some sort of ingredient she was building with.

"YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH," Soushu observed.

As before, he did not sound angry with Tariel. Wolfram realized in horror that this being did not _hate_ the humans or Earth or demons. He was not _angry_ with them. They were as far beneath him as ants at a picnic, to be eradicated with no more fuss or muss. Lesser angels like Tariel who disagreed with him were children to be humored, to a point. Their views were simply _mistaken._ A more implacable, horrific foe Wolfram found hard to imagine. This being created and destroyed worlds, and didn't even care. Not in any sense that Wolfram cared.

"Then I become more," Tariel replied. She had grown, still the same child shape, but taller now than Ponderosa and the third angel.

"MORE THAN THAT," Soushu replied.

"Yes," said Tariel.

And Tariel exploded, in a ball of light, as Wolfram and Guy put all the power they had into their shield, to withstand a light like a supernova, a brilliant flash in the sky seen everywhere on Earth. All four Earths. Including a grassy field by Great Yarmouth, England.

-oOo-

"_Aah!"_ Garena cried out in anguish, and fell to his knees, on that field in Yarmouth. _"Tariel!"_

_"Mother!"_ cried Friedrich, in the field greenhouse high in the Trondheim mountain winter. He staggered against a magnolia tree, and stared in disbelief at all his beloved dogwood trees that were… _gone._

Every dogwood tree, on every Earth, was gone.

And the angels wept. It was a very rare thing indeed, for an immortal angel to die.

Matthias' smartphone buzzed. Unlike the ESA staff, he happened to live in towns with cell towers – Yarmouth and Dusseldorf both had good cell phone service.

Shouri shrugged at him. "_I'd_ answer it," he suggested. "Something happened. Up to you, though."

Matthias answered on speaker. "Bielefeld. Yes?"

"Matthias, it's Rhys. Something's happened. There were pyrotechnics in the purple field – lightning and stuff. Then that giant flash – did you see it? Now the purple field's shrunk back – it's – yes, it's crossing the moon now. Our old moon is back to white."

Matthias _winced_ to think what drug cocktail they'd pumped into Rhys to make him – very temporarily – effective again. _Deal with that later…_ "Good news. Thank you, Rhys."

"Witherbotham wants to talk to the aliens."

Matthias held a hand up to forestall any _'alien'_ attempt to chime in. "I'll relay that."

_Pause._ "Are you coming back yet?"

"Soon. Thank you, Rhys. Bielefeld out." And Matthias cut the call before Witherbotham could get pushy.

"Let's do it _now,_" said Yuuri. All seven joined hands in a circle. And they _reached –_ and Wolfram and Guy appeared sitting in the middle of the circle. They laughed out loud at the relief of their salvation, and hugged each other. Then they got up and started hugging other people.

"Wait._ Garena!"_ cried Yuuri, before Wolfram got through to him. Garena was missing.

Aldrich clasped Yuuri's hand firmly. Garena was his father's brother, his husband's father. "Let's go get him." Four other hands piled on top of his.

"It's not over, Yuuri," Wolfram interrupted. "Tariel exploded, the most impossible brilliant white light you can imagine. And then…"

"And then – what?" Yuuri demanded.

"It was a like a phoenix rising from the ashes. But, it wasn't like Tariel, not anymore."

"A woman," supplied Guy. "The child turned into a woman. Tariel in front of Soushu looked like… a mouse facing down a lion. But the woman and Soushu were more of a match."

"Except Soushu has two minions," added Wolfram. "The… woman who used to be Tariel… I think she could win against Soushu one on one. But, against all three, I'm not so sure. One was Ponderosa. The other I don't know."

Yuuri met his eye, and nodded once calmly in salute. Wolfram could see that his husband was fully Maou now. "We'll go see. Stay safe."

Guy lay his hand on the pile of Maou hands. "I'm with you."

"Oh, hell," said Wolfram. "That means I'm the only –"

They vanished.

"– The only one left behind because I'm _not _a Maou," Wolfram finished crossly. He flopped onto his back, alone in the tall grass, and growled at the clear blue summer sky. "My _husband,_ my _mother,_ my _grandfather,_ my _brother-in-law,_ my _step-father,_ my alternate-world _father,_ and my alternate-world _self,_ dammit! Even _Shinou_ is my umpty-great grandfather. But not _me!"_

Somehow – and this caused endless bemusement in the family – Wolfram had even yet not figured out that his beloved son Bertram was with them too, as Shinou. Good thing, too – because that would have made him _really_ mad.

-oOo-

Garena could not have _not_ gone back to the scene of this battle, after pulling Wolfram out. He didn't need air or force bubbles. He didn't have to be physical unless he wanted to be. The great goddess who wrestled with Soushu was not his parent, that much was clear. Tariel was dead.

But that goddess could tell him what happened to her. And her fight, was his fight. There was no doubt whatsoever that Tariel died to throw back Soushu. And that battle was not yet won.

By the time the seven Maous arrived back, Garena was locked in combat with Ponderosa, and losing ground, while the goddess seemed to be stalemated against Soushu and the unknown third combatant. The visible dimension of this appeared like wrestling and cosmic bolts of power attacks. But the entities in this fray battled in many other dimensions. The mortal Maous could only dimly perceive those other dimensions. But they could act in them, without conscious understanding, and fight.

Guy Tom and Shinou were fighters. They immediately joined Garena in grappling with Ponderosa, turning the tide in that battle. Matthias was tempted somehow, but in this incarnation, he was no fighter, so he hung back.

"THE PLANET," the goddess told them, despite being locked in combat. "CHANNEL THE DESIRE OF THE PLANET TO ME."

"Don't overthink it, Sire," suggested Aldrich, at Yuuri's boggled reaction. "I can feel it, can't you? The vast grief, the _desire_ of that world."

Cecilie nodded emphatically. "Their grief at losing Guy Tom. Can you feel it? Their grief for the billions who died because of Soushu. Losing their astronaut, that sharp shock of grief is awakening the older, oceanic grief."

Shouri felt it. "Their grief for the ecosystems disrupted, remorse for the damage people did to the planet before that."

Yuuri felt it. "Their broken dreams, and hopes for a better life for their children."

Matthias felt it. "Their belief – their _demand_ – that it has to get better than this."

They all felt it. And drew it up from Earth. Bolts of energy, that they fed to the goddess. And she grew, in this hour of her birth. Until she pushed Soushu and his minions entirely out of this well. The purple moon was gone, and only the one Earth floated jewel-like and perfect beneath them.

The woman shrank to merely seven feet tall, to stand before them, and thank them. She appeared voluptuous, her hair in many black-brown braids, bound with cords and beads and flowers. Her skin was a rich brown, her features indeterminate between several races, with a beauty that came from mature health and maternal warmth and good nature, more than any kind of young prettiness. Her dress was pieced of greens, simple, low-cut and smocked over generous breasts, fitted with gathers across broad hips girded with a small fringed apron, the skirt falling to her bare feet.

"Tariel?" Garena asked. He swallowed painfully.

"No. I am Gaia. Tariel is dead. I am sorry for your loss, brave one," she said. She drew a finger gently across Garena's cheek, catching a single manly tear.

"Then you're not… Tariel, risen to be an archangel?" Aldrich asked.

"No. Tariel died that I might be quickened. He let go all of his power, into Earth, that I would be born from the potentiality, and be goddess to this world. You helped, by feeding me that potentiality. I could not fully form before the fight began. They had to stop me before I was complete, if they would win."

"You don't… remember being Tariel?" Garena asked.

"I never was Tariel. And Tariel is gone. I am more your sister than your mother, Garena. But your mother gave a tiny piece of herself into a seed, mixed with a mortal's seed, to create you. She gave all of what she was, to be like a single pollen grain, to quicken me out of a hunger built by an entire planet, over endless millenia."

"You're not an angel at all, then," said Yuuri.

"No. I am Gaia, the goddess. And I have always been. But only now am I _alive._ I could not be, unless the planet had built me over millenia of wanting me to be. Tariel died to grant the planet its wish.

"But it is my desire that this planet, so long forsaken, be blessed with angels again." She gazed at the shining blue-green-brown jewel, swathed in its delicate swirls of white cloud, its scars invisible against the beauty at this distance. She looked like a mother adoring a peacefully sleeping baby. "She will be blessed," promised Gaia.

-oOo-

_far beneath the ship_

_the world is mourning_

_they don't realize_

_he's alive_

_no one understands_

_but Major Tom sees_

_now the life commands_

_this is my home_

_I'm coming home_

-oOo-

AN: _Please review! _


	9. Planet Earth is Blue

**Kyou Kara Maou – Space Oddity**

Summary: Shouri's demon tribe abandoned Earth, taking refuge in Shin Makoku, as Earth's weather went insane, and a second purple moon appeared. But one Earth demon stayed behind – an astronaut linked to Wolfram. This chapter: Conclusion.

_Author's Note: _Thanks to **DemiDaemon**, **JoanaW**, **Nevynwatcher**, and **Goku Girl** for reviewing!

Long hiatus again, sorry…. But! I think there's creative energy tied up in these unfinished stories that needs to be released. Probably by finishing them. ;) This one especially was supposed to be _short._ Thanks to everyone who still cares about these stories, after all this time!

**Chapter 9 – Planet Earth is Blue**

_Earth below us_

_drifting falling_

_floating weightless_

_coming coming home..._

_home..._

-oOo-

Major Guy Tom, astronaut, found himself deposited in a winter evening castle yard with most – not all – of his newfound friends. Matthias and Shinou were missing, while Wolfram and the greenish-haired toddler were back. They drifted indoors from the cold. Coming off an adrenaline jag, from the strangest and most harrowing experience of his life, Guy was still gazing at the decor in a daze, when dear cousin Shouma arrived and presented him with a magical translating earbud. Regretfully, he tuned in to what was going on around him.

" – You'll stay, of course," Shouri assured him. His father Shouma behind him looked more thoughtful.

"I'd… love to see all the DTI again," Guy allowed, and met Shouma's eye. "And then, return to my husband."

And then what? How to explain what had happened, how an astronaut fell back to Earth alive, after his spaceship exploded? _Hmmm._ But Wolfram's wisdom came back to him. _I can't do the wrong thing, just because I'm embarrassed._ Though on the whole, waiting a couple days to go back might make his reception less… fraught. An image came to him, of being locked up in a white room in a straightjacket, while hostile scientists _studied_ him. _Homophobic hags inserting things_… _That's just silly, Guy Tom,_ he chided himself. _No, you know more than you think you do,_ an unknown part of him observed.

Shouma nodded. _Of course._ More doubtful, his son Shouri set off to arrange a DTI reception for tomorrow.

Guy became aware of a sad conversation nearby.

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Uncle," Aldrich hugged Garena. "May I arrange the memorial service for you? We could hold it here in the capital, if you wish. Tariel was a national hero." Granted, Tariel was a national hero for _defeating Yuuri_, but it did save Shin Makoku from an unwinnable war.

Garena was too saddened to care. He shrugged assent.

"Ah, Grandfather," Yuuri said, "Could we… lift the veil between worlds again?" For he'd checked, and still couldn't reach Earth on his own power. The goddess Gaia had dispatched them here.

Garena glared at him.

"After the memorial service, of course," Aldrich smoothed. "Three days' time," he reminded Yuuri – the Maou still forgot Shin Makoku custom sometimes, and this was an awkward time for it. "Shall I contact Father and Manfred for you, Uncle?"

"No, I'll bring them. But tonight I just want to go home," Garena said. He vanished.

Wolfram left hug-filled reunions farther down the hall to join them. He turned to Shouma. "Otou-san, I'd like to show Major Tom around our home. If you'd like that?" he asked Guy shyly.

"Yes, very much so," Guy agreed, in relief.

The prosaic details of cadging a delicious meat-pie snack from the kitchen staff, learning the castle layout well enough to find his way back to dining room and offices and his hosts, being introduced to his generous-sized guestroom and bath, were all soothing. As Wolfram expected. He'd arranged orientation for the rest of the DTI. But also, he knew Guy. _As himself._

Wolfram arranged his own loaned clothes in Guy's wardrobe – they would fit him perfectly – while Guy bounce-tested the giant canopy bed a little. Wolfram settled into an armchair, in a conversational group of furniture by a wall of curtains. He crossed his legs and relaxed, a courtier in repose.

"It isn't medieval at all, you know," Guy eventually said. "More pre-World War I aristocratic, I'd say."

"What was different after _'World War I'_?" Wolfram asked.

Guy shot him an apologetic half-smile. "Downfall of the aristocrats, pretty much, I'm afraid. You are, I presume, an aristocrat?"

"Yes," replied Wolfram, undisturbed. "It's not the same here. My in-laws have told me about the decadence and abuse that led to the _'downfall of the aristocrats'._ Your so-called _'aristocrats' _ were common men and women, with delusions of grandeur. The Aristocrats of Shin Makoku are not common men. We're born and bred with native skills and powers that the common demons lack. Then we have a full century of training in public service before we're considered mature – I still have nearly a decade to go, myself. I'm _'spoiled'_ as Aristocrats go – among the wealthiest. Yet I'm a trained healer. I served as a cavalry commander for twenty years. I currently serve as national Lord of Public Health and Welfare. That public is indeed healthy, and well-off. We Aristocrats serve the people, defend the weak, and husband our natural resources. And we do not tolerate an Aristocrat who doesn't.

"It's a bit different in the human kingdoms," Wolfram allowed. "The founder of a dynasty is always strong. His heirs, sometimes yes, sometimes no. But even there, revolution only happens when it gets so bad for the common people, that they think even chaos is better than trying to reform the status quo. None of our world has much history of exploited lower classes, anyway. Most of it – not all – is ruled by some form of responsive aristocracy or theocracy. But the _autocracy_ your world suffered from, that's rare. Incompetent and abusive rulers are brought down. By the neighbors, if not by their subjects."

"And your country plays what part in that?"

Wolfram shot him a crooked green-eyed grin. "Historically, we intervene against nasty neighbors." He shrugged. "But we're outnumbered and surrounded by humans. Their population grows much faster than our own. My husband Yuuri intervenes _often_, but he rarely gets anyone _killed_ doing it. At first I considered him a major wimp." Wolfram scowled, then shrugged again. "But he is _awfully_ good at it."

Guy chuckled softly. "To think. My little cousin Yuu-chan. Shouma worried for him, you know. His older boy, Shouri, was a model student, sure to compete well in the world. But he worried that the younger boy didn't seem competitive at all, not even in baseball. He just liked to play instead of study."

"Yuuri had a vision not so long ago," Wolfram replied, "of what he would have been, if he hadn't come to Shin Makoku. _'A pathetic salaryman, not very good at his job, trying to cop a feel off a vapid secretary.' _ Yet in this world he's perfect. I think he'll be the greatest Maou in history, in the end. I'm biased, of course."

"Of course," Guy agreed with a smile. "On behalf of my cousinly family, we thank you for your bias. And your help. I'm sure you play a large role in King Yuuri's success."

Wolfram blushed slightly, and nodded his gratitude. Then he sighed. "The one of you was a god-send. Twenty thousand of you… not so much. Yuuri found his perfect niche. As Lord of Public Health and Welfare, though, I worry for the rest of you. DTI has been here for a month. By our standards – forgive me – you're more human than demon. The DTI seem offended by the propect of _'lowering themselves to physical labor'_. Yet they're barely competent to do that – no applicable skills, and irrelevant education. They wouldn't succeed in the human lands, and they won't really succeed here. They hoped to stay until they could go back to their automobiles and _'white collar jobs'._ To an Earth restored as though nothing had ever happened. But is that likely?"

"No, I don't think so," Guy replied. "There were some, _After,_ who couldn't – or wouldn't – adjust to hard work. But in the end, most people want to live. They do what they need to survive. Perhaps by saving DTI from the disaster we experienced on Earth, they had too soft a landing. The Earth that was – that's gone forever."

"Great Yarmouth didn't look so bad," Wolfram mused.

Guy narrowed his eyes. "Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"You're a leader. My brother-in-law is a good administrator. But he isn't the leader my husband is." Wolfram rose. "Be welcome here. But I don't really recommend staying, long term. Just something to think about."

Guy blanched. "_I_ don't want to take over DTI!"

"Of course not, directly," Wolfram agreed. "Let Shouri stand in front. Like Yuuri does." He winked at Guy, and headed for the door. "There will be a late supper in about half an hour. Dress for dinner, please – leftmost suit in the wardrobe. And tomorrow – I can show you more of my life. If you'd like."

-oOo-

_Planet Earth is blue  
And there's nothing I can do._

-oOo-

The DTI rally was held in the afternoon, on the parade grounds by the garrison barracks below the castle, where many of the DTI still lived. Guy vaulted onto the review platform. Shouri made a move to introduce him, but Guy waved him back. "They already know who I am, Shouri. Just show me how to use the… sound system." Indeed, the gay astronaut Guy Tom was far and away the most famous DTI. Shouri briefly explained the system, and withdrew to stand with Yuuri and the family, behind Guy.

Guy bemusedly gazed into the suggestive pink lips of the public address conch shell. He gathered his wind, then strode forward with a hero's fey grin. "I'm Major Guy Tom, of the European Space Agency. Greetings, Earthlings!" he boomed out, through sympathetically matching pink conch shells distributed on poles. "I bring you news from home!"

The applause and foot-stomping were thunderous. After a few moments, Guy tucked the conch under his arm, nodded, and applauded with them. Guy was a true _hero_ to these people!

"You know, they used to brief astronauts on how to greet aliens," he said, after they settled down. "No, it's true! You know, just in case. I met with King Harry and Good Queen Kate before I left London –" He paused, expecting more applause, and was greeted instead with an unhappy murmur. "Oh, yes. I see. Prince Charles' second son Harry succeeded to the throne just days after you left Earth. Which was two and a half years ago, our time. Princess Kate also survived, and they married in the spring _After_. To _'close ranks' _ and boost public morale. It had been… a hard winter."

Guy paused. When he spoke again, he gazed solemnly out, as though to seeking to meet the eye of every person in the crowd. "Estimates are that by the end of that winter, over a third of the human population of Earth was dead. Most, from the immediate weather disasters. The United Kingdom was blessed – comparatively." A weak cheer went up from the Brits in the audience. Guy doused it with a hand. "Only a quarter of population of the British Isles died. Mostly of epidemics, stemming from starvation and the breakdown of sanitation and infrastructure." The audience went silent.

"The worst devastation in Europe," Guy continued, "was from freak tornadoes. Estimates ran to several _thousand_ tornadoes in the EU, and perhaps three times as many across the Eurasian steppe. The major cities were leveled. Forest fires devastated the Russian taiga." He paused. "Europe was among the more fortunate areas.

"China, India, and Australia were ravaged by flooding brought on by torrential rains, up to 90 centimeters a day, for up to a week in some areas, accompanied by typhoon winds across southeast China, eastern India, and Indonesia. No sanitation system could withstand that. The pandemics started there. Over a billion died.

"Japan and several other island nations – and the entire West Coast of North America – suffered tsunamis. Japan lost a third of its population the first _day_. With nearly all of its arable land sown with salt, and pandemics raging across Asia, Japan's population has finally… stopped falling. Just recently. Perhaps one in five Japanese remains.

"North America got it all – tsunamis devasting East Coast and West, thousands of tornadoes, a spate of Category 5 hurricanes, and the boreal forests burned. I know many of you were from the great city strips of Washington DC to Boston, or San Diego through Santa Barbara, or north from San Jose up to Vancouver. I'm sorry, but none of those cities exist anymore. The entire continent – really, the whole Western Hemisphere – devolved into civil wars. No order has emerged there yet.

"I know not many of us are from Africa. It didn't fare any better.

"The band of Islamic nations… has grown strange. They suffered natural catastrophes, hunger, and disease, as everywhere else. In addition, there have been _'holy wars'_. I feel… unqualified to explain the nature of those. The fighting is still going strong there, as in North America."

Guy didn't look sad. By the end of this, he wore the _'thousand yard stare'_ made famous by US Marines in the unspeakably brutal Pacific theater of World War II. _This,_ he realized, _this is what was _'wrong'_ about Shouma and Shouri. Once you've gotten it, the stare never wholly leaves you__._

He put it away as best he could, and grinned fiercely. "Some good news! I've met one other DTI survivor, and he's in the ESA. Do any of you remember Herr Doktor Matthias Bielefeld?" There was a brief cheer, a lull, then a stronger cheer.

"We've been blessed," Guy said. "DTI has been truly blessed, by the leadership of Shibuya Shouri," _applause,_ "the magic of Shibuya Yuuri," _stronger applause,_ "and the overwhelmingly generous support of the people of Shin Makoku," _grand applause._ "I am honored to get the chance to visit you, and visit _here. _As an astronaut, I was willing to give my life, if need be, to investigate that bedamned purple moon. To find out just _**what the hell happened to us!"**_

Guy had to pause to reign in his rage. He continued, "I'm grateful to have found the answer to that question. Because we who survived – we really deserve to know.

"I'm grateful to visit with you here. To have a chance to see and experience another _world._ I'll be here a few more days. Then – I'm going **home**. To let them know."

He waited on the stage, applauding with the crowd for another few minutes of ovation. Then Guy strode out glad-handing the crowd, with Yuuri and Shouri, Shouma and Miko.

Guy didn't invite DTI to come home with him. He didn't have to. Wolfram was proud of him.

-oOo-

The memorial service for Tariel was beautiful. But Yuuri was exhausted, leading the solemn procession home from Shinou's temple. Looking back, it seemed to him he'd been a callow young twit when first he'd met the littlest angel. He'd met Tariel rarely through the years since. But somehow, with a few testy words, each time Tariel had rocked the foundations of his world. The world felt diminished somehow, without him. Her. It.

Him-her-it stood patiently waiting for them, by Shinou's fountain in Blood Pledge Castle, in his usual all-weather bare feet and sleeveless unbleached linen shift.

_**"Tariel!"**_ Yuuri cried in astonishment. He glanced at Wolfram, and was relieved that he saw the angel, too. "We were told you were dead!"

"We just had a lovely memorial for you, great-grandnymph," Wolfram added.

"Yes, thank you. Not want to interrupt. Need help from favorite grandson – ah, Grandson!"

"_Grandmother!"_ Aldrich cried in delight. He and Manfred hadn't been far behind Yuuri. "You're not dead! Father and Uncle will be so glad to see you!" Aldrich quickly dispatched their sons Dietrich and Efram to go warn Friedrich and Garena – Tariel's sons – dragging toward the rear of the procession. "So you're not dead!"

"I dead," Tariel contradicted him. "But four millenia with mortals – I develop a _'personality'_ that live on, even when all angel self gone. So just dead. Not gone. Need Grandson advice. Me girl? Or boy?"

"I've always thought of you as a boy," said Manfred, Tariel's other living grandson.

"Girl," Aldrich said definitively. "Because you're my grandma!" He bent down to kiss the late angel's cheek, but found she wasn't physically there. "Why do you ask?" he inquired. He sliced his hand through her midriff.

"Dead boring. Angel gone. I incarnate as demon." She closed her eyes, made two fists, and – opened them again. "Stop that," she told Aldrich. He withdrew. She closed her eyes again, made some tense effort, and then said, "Oof!"

She lifted one bare foot off the ground, put it back. She peered down her shift. "Huh. Being girl is cold."

Aldrich touched her – now physical! – and happily wrapped her in his cloak.

By then, Tariel's octacenturian sons Friedrich and Garena burst in, and fell on her in tears.

Eventually Friedrich cried, "Why didn't you contact us? Mother, we thought we'd lost you forever!"

"Life flash in review."

"Three days ago," said Garena.

"Long life. Stupid rule. Decide rule not apply to me. Then decide baby, or incarnate as me. Choose me. Then have to choose boy or girl. Grandson help. Now I demon. Child demon. Maybe need parents? Too many choices."

"Tariel!" boomed Quercus, archangel of archangels, suddenly appeared before them. "You are returned to us!"

"Them. Not you."

"Oho! You can't _fall_ by raising a goddess, little one! Such a demon is raised to angel! Archangel, in your case."

"Oh," said Tariel. That hadn't occurred to her. Without her angelic powers, she could not foresee.

"The Goddess Gaia needs an archangel to lead the hosts of angels restored to Earth."

"Quercus' equal?" Tariel looked up at him aghast, huge green eyes round. "Redeem forsaken well? _Me?"_

"You did pretty well single-handedly here, for four millenia. I can think of no one more qualified. And Gaia chose you."

"_That._ For _that,_ I rise to archangel!"

Quercus touched her head in benediction.

"Oof," said Tariel. Who now looked as she had all along. But she didn't need the cloak anymore, which she returned slowly to Aldrich. She gazed at the floor, at what infinities of vistas of future branching possibility, who could guess. "DTI come home," she said eventually.

"Yes, that's their plan," agreed Yuuri.

Tariel nodded slowly, and smiled. "Good." She touched her sons lightly. "Garena – I see you often. Friedrich – watch, and try, for I love you. Not forget what you really are. Grandsons, great-grandsons – take care of Friedrich and Garena for me." She touched them all, as Quercus had touched her, and each lit up with the overflowing life majutsu of a fire healer halo as she did so. "Playing mortal was worth it, to create you."

Then she vanished. Quercus vanished too.

"Will we ever see her again?" Yuuri wondered aloud.

No one was really surprised when there was no answer.

-oOo-

Later, Wolfram stood alone, out on the dining room balcony, wrapped in a reading lap-blanket. He gazed up at cold winter night stars. Conrad and Gwendal noticed him as they walked by, and grabbed some cloaks to go out and join him.

"Unlike you to be so pensive, little brother," Conrad gentled. "What's amiss?" Gwendal took up station on the balcony railing on Wolfram's other side, offering up his usual dark and silent strength. "Tariel's passage is sad, of course," Conrad suggested. "And the Earthlings leaving…" That last was less than sincere. Gwendal's head bobbled a _yes-and-no_, then a definite _No_.

Wolfram couldn't see Gwendal, and was mercifully too distracted to bring up Earthling venereal disease again. "It's… I…" he floundered. But the intimate dark invites confidences, and he was warmly nestled between his big brothers, the bedrock of his life. And he was sorely troubled. His husky voice fell an octave, and he murmured, "Again, I had sex with another man. It wasn't my fault! It was Guy who did it! But again…" His huge green eyes glowed up at Conrad in entreaty.

Behind Wolfram, Gwendal pinched the bridge of his nose. But under that trusting gaze, Conrad managed to keep his face straight. "Hmmm?"

"You know I'm sworn to sexual fidelity!" Wolfram blurted. "But _Hahaue_… And _Chichiue_…"

"You're afraid nympho – er, their sexual – um, free love – might have been heritable?" Conrad suggested. Gwendal scowled in the background. Conrad only spoke something that _had_ to have occurred to all three of them, even if the brothers never spoke of it. Manfred's, and more particularly _Cecilie's_, sexual adventurism was just too flamboyant to ignore.

"Yes!" Wolfram blurted, in relief – perhaps relief at being understood. "You…" He left that thought incomplete. He suspected Conrad's sex life was not fully monogamous, from rumors he heard about Yozak. Well, and the fact that Yozak partook of the Blood Pledge gay bath scene every chance he got. _Just to gather intelligence_, Wolfram thought primly. Conrad had also lived in _Boston_ a couple years, and _Tokyo_, where Yuuri had gotten many sexy gifts for Wolfram. There, the gay club scene may have resembled London's disturbing public sexual crudity, were Wolfram willing to think on it. Which he wasn't.

Wolfram turned instead to Gwendal. "You and Annissina are faithful, aren't you, elder brother?"

Gwendal cleared his throat in alarm. "Yes. Completely. Well… I am. Yes, of course. Annissina is also faithful."

"Perhaps you're just undersexed," suggested Conrad.

"I'll have you know we have a _fantastic_ sex life!" Gwendal blurted in umbrage. "Annissina is the most imaginative lover, open to all sorts of costume and role play. She devises intricate sex toys, and –" He stopped and gulped, noting the twinkling wide eyes and dropped-open mouths of his younger brothers. Gwendal cleared his throat. "It's… highly satisfactory."

"What kind of sex toys?" inquired Wolfram. "I mean, any that Conrad and I might find useful?"

"I'm sure I wouldn't know," Gwendal said quellingly.

"Did you even have a sex life before Annissina?" inquired Conrad.

"We were discussing _Wolfram's_ fidelity problems," growled Gwendal. "Of which, there are none. Except in his head."

Wolfram scowled. Conrad patted him on the shoulder, "There, there, little brother. We're just not used to discussing…"

"Yes. We've never even discussed Hahaue…" Gwendal ventured.

They considered it.

"Let's not," concluded Wolfram. "Thank you both, for, um. I feel better."

"Any time."

"Yes, of course."

Male bonding complete, they exited back indoors with alacrity, to part in three different directions, without meeting each other's eyes. True to form, they never mentioned the conversation again. Though, in long boring government meetings, Wolfram and Conrad independently imagined Gwendal-knitted sex toys, to pass the time. An Annissina-device close to … tender regions… just didn't bear thinking about.

-oOo-

The goddess Gaia had made clear that in the new order, she encouraged less to-ing and fro-ing between Earth and the well of the one king, than there had been in the past. Perhaps it was this that inspired Shouri. Or perhaps it was the universal one-ness that underlay all, an oceanic unity of consciousness just barely submerged in a Maou, which synchronized the need to brotherly bond at the same time as Cecilie's traumatized sons. At any rate, he knocked on Yuuri's bedroom door about the same time as Conrad and Gwendal joined Wolfram on the balcony.

"Come," invited Yuuri. Entering, Shouri found his little brother in black-trimmed lavender jammies, sprawled across his giant bed, tiny Ekaterin on a baby blanket before him. She couldn't sit up yet, but Yuuri was already trying to interest her in playing ball, with a soft squishable Gwendal-knit, rendered in colors and size to not quite depict a baseball.

"We're all set to leave in the morning," began Shouri, settling on the edge of the bed by his niece.

"Uh-huh," agreed Yuuri. He was the one who'd done the high-level arrangements.

"On behalf of Demon Tribe International, I wish to thank you for –"

"You're welcome," Yuuri cut him off. "Sure. Glad to have you. Any time." He stroked the bottom of Ekaterin's tiny wrinkled foot. Tiny toes curled delightfully in response.

"Little brother, I –"

"Hm? Yes, what?"

"You've completed your… assignment here."

"My what?"

"I mean, you're now free to come home, and not… You don't have to stay married to him."

Yuuri stared at him. His tiny daughter Ekaterin slobbered on the knitted ball. "I, ah, thank you, Shouri. That's… kind. But I live here. With my kids. And husband. And all."

"But you don't _have _to anymore."

"I never did _have_ to, Shouri."

"You're really… like Guy?"

"Well, not nearly as much like Guy as Wolfram is. Probably even less like Rhys." _Brainy._

"You're being deliberately obtuse!" accused Shouri.

Yuuri sighed and sat up cross-legged. "Perhaps you're a little guilty of that, too, Shouri," he muttered as he rearranged his legs. "So, any special girl in mind for my sister-in-law?" he quipped brightly. "Okaa-san sure would love another grandchild to spoil, you know. Like, on the same planet she is."

"No," admitted Shouri morosely.

"Well. Keep at it," Yuuri encouraged, "_Ganbatte kudasai! _Was there anything else, Shou-chan?"

"I'll… we'll… miss you."

Yuuri nodded slowly. A warm glowing smile grew on his face. "I'll miss you, too. It's been good getting to know you again."

That was all Shouri really needed. He bid his little brother good night, and went to bed happy, eager to return to Earth.

"He'll figure it out someday," Yuuri confided to Ekaterin. "I'm just lucky I had your Wolfu-chu explain it to me. It's harder for these brainy guys. They think too much."

-oOo-

Through the intermediary of the _Prince of Darkness _Garena – now back on the job – Yuuri was given to know that the new celestial management of Earth discouraged direct Maou-ly intervention from other wells. They approved the return of the DTI, and the proposed settlement site of Great Yarmouth. But only the archangel Tariel would open and close the gates of Earth, thank you.

At the appointed hour, before the twenty thousand massed DTI on the army parade grounds and beyond, the review stand vanished, and a shining gate took its place. Two pearly round columns, fully a meter across, stood ten meters apart, and rose twenty meters up to a massive gold lintel. All shined so brightly it was painful to look at directly. A giant round globe depicting the beautiful planet Earth hung in the upper half of the gateway, by way of labelling. Through the aperture clearly showed the summer morning Happy Daze Holiday Estates, distorted as through a giant stretch of plastic wrap.

The DTI were still admiring this in wonder, and hadn't begun to move yet, when a small flaming tree appeared to block the path. The archangel Tariel – barefoot in his linen shift, but shining as painfully as the gate itself – stepped forward from the tree. Yuuri's party, including Garena, Wolfram, Guy, and his Earth family, walked forward to meet him. Her. It.

But Tariel wasn't there to talk. He pointed to certain people – Guy, Shouri and family, Aldrich with his box of seeds, Yuuri, Wolfram, another hundred leaders selected from the crowd – and as he pointed, each was suddenly transported into a group being neatly assembled before the gate. When the flaming tree vanished, this advance party walked through, from a chilly field of half-frozen mud, into earlier morning summer sunshine. Wolfram looked back. The Shin Makoku garrison and throng were visible through the gate. But as the last of the advance group walked through, the flaming dogwood tree returned to block the way.

A smattering of natives came to gawk at the gate – some fled. But from the low guard and vehicle count, it was fairly clear most of the ESA had decamped and returned to London by now, four days after the demise of space ship and space anomaly. But not all. Dr. Bielefeld and his one remaining in-patient, Dr. Rhys Thomas, came out to investigate the hubbub. After staring across the Estates' central field a moment, Rhys and Guy ran to embrace each other, Rhys sobbing.

Guy said, "What's this? I got back before 8:00 on Tuesday. But you started neurosing without me!" It had taken a while to think up the right quip for the occasion.

"Guy…? This can't be! Your ship…!" Rhys sobbed.

"_'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'," _Guy quoted, grateful that Matthias had refreshed his memory of Hamlet so recently. "It's alright, love. I'm fine. And I found my demon buddies – all of them. I have so much to tell you!"

Tariel had, of course, calculated the size and composition of the advance party exactly. The few ESA guards – left to secure the ESA equipment evacuation – might have taken Guy, if he were alone. But faced with 100 seeming civilians complete with food, luggage, and winter coats, they hung back, reported to the authorities, and observed.

Matthias helped this indecision along by telling the guard captain that he personally knew every single member of the party, that they were the DTI-of-the-Chunnel-Incident who'd vanished just _Before_, and that this was part of the unfolding of the under-explained events of four days ago. The gate was clearly of alien origin and intent. The guard captain was suitably persuaded that any decisions to be made here were above his pay grade.

This accomplished, Matthias waved forward Shouri and Shouma, to continue negotiations for housing for their DTI refugees. Well, they pretended they were negotiations, anyway. The _Happy Daze_ was a vast abandoned mobile home park. Their plan was to simply appropriate it, while making friends with their new neighbors.

More neighbors began to arrive to investigate. Quite a few – including guards – recognized and thronged the seed hawker Aldrich and his fancy box. He'd originally intended to give the seeds – and some sacks of potatoes selected from Yuuri's pantry – to the DTI. But none of the DTI were much more than garden dabblers. In the end, he handed most of his stock out to Yarmouth farmers and gardeners, including several hundred of his prized _'pumpkin-apple__-__tree'_ seeds. They'd do the DTI more good in the hands of surrounding farmers, anyway.

The sad-eyed woman was wrong about that apple tree, by the way. The scrawny sapling didn't ripen an apple in a week. Instead, it set thousands of flowers, and grew the tree along with the little apples for support, so that a strong and mature apple tree provided many crates of delicious crunchy juicy lavender-blushed McIntosh-like apples in late September. Many of Aldrich's '_pumpkin'_ seeds produced an apple crop that autumn. The rest weren't apple trees. Each variety of fruit and nut tree seemed to find its way to the grower who would love it best. Or perhaps the seed itself simply grew into what its symbiotic human most wanted.

While everyone at _Happy Daze_ was thoroughly engaged in talking, Tariel began to send through the rest of the DTI, selected and assembled in the same silently high-handed fashion. The flow of invading refugees continued smooth and unthreatening. Wolfram and others quietly directed them through to claim the farthest empty _'caravans'_ they could find, and reminded them there might be as many as ten people housed per mobile home. This resulted in none of the milling confusion and conflict one might have expected, as Tariel chose her groups very, _very_ well. The DTIs simply found themselves with about the right number of friends and family, at about the same time as a traffic-director waved them toward the next caravan-to-be-filled.

Wolfram's mind boggled anew at the sheer ability of the littlest angel. Tariel seemed so unassuming, almost cuddly. Until she acted. Then Wolfram was humbled to be reminded of how very, _very_ far from demon his great-grandmother really was.

The DTI later learned that armed reinforcements had been dispatched for the ESA guards. But they arrived long after peaceful settlement and local integration was a _fait accompli_. Apparently, they'd suffered lorry punctured tires, leading to trucks lying on their sides and completely blocking the roads at bottlenecks – without injury, and on four different approaches to Yarmouth. Humans on Earth were already being trained to a new appreciation of the term _'coincidence'_. As in, _take a hint - there are no coincidences. _It didn't take long to notice that such _'coincidences'_ generally turned out _'all for the best' _ somehow.

Without directly challenging anyone's belief system, Gaia was already persuading a tired and traumatized world that finally, a beneficient universe had their back. It wasn't that they didn't have to strive and work hard – they still needed that. But if they did their best, each in their own scope of action, always working with nature and not against it, things would generally work out.

-oOo-

"Wolframu…" Yuuri nuzzled-whispered into his ear. "Cousin Guy told me about your _'gracious and thoughtful' _un-vitation to stay." He paused long enough to let Wolfram tense defensively. "Thank you."

Wolfram relaxed back into his husband's arms. "You're welcome." They watched as the last Earthlings – ones with friends to linger with over good-byes – straggled through the gate. "They'll do all right, won't they?"

_Not at first._ "Yes," said Yuuri with intent. "They'll work and love and dream and make meaningful lives, with just enough tragedy to keep it meaningful." He nodded in self-agreement. "They'll be good for Earth that way. A little kernel of people who aren't so shell-shocked and traumatized and desensitized. Some impractical dreamers and softies, tucked away in a place that's safe enough."

"Except for the sharks."

"Gaia will do something about the sharks." _Or not._

Wolfram nodded contentedly. "They'll be fine."

Yuuri frowned. "Mm. Wolframu… what exactly do you and your family mean when you say, _'They're fine'_? No – never mind. By now, you probably mean the same thing I do by it. Let's wave regally, and get back to our own lives."

"Mm-hmm!" Wolfram agreed whole-heartedly. "Say, Yuuri – what are we going to do about the last purple moon?"

Garena had told them that other-Aldrich-Maou had taken advantage of the distraction of Soushu's showdown with Tariel, and closed the purple moon over the well of the five kings. Each one was harder, with all the renegade archangels' power more focused. The last moon would thus be at least four times harder to close. Probably more, since it was Soushu's last chance.

"I have no idea. Good thing we don't have astronauts." Yuuri cheerfully turned and led them home.

-oOo-

The End.

-oOo-

AN: _Please review! _

_I'm also curious whether anyone really cares whether I finish _Disaster Up North_. Maybe a cursory job of it – just sketch out mandatory connecting sections, and only flesh out a couple dramatic high points, then call it done…_


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